Houston company plans wind connection for TVA

CHATTANOOGA, TENNESSEE - The Tennessee Valley Authority favors a Houston company's effort to build an electrical connection between wind turbines in Oklahoma and Texas and power users in the Tennessee Valley.

The proposed $3.5 billion project would use direct current rather than the alternating current of most electric lines and needs to get approval from at least four regulatory agencies.

TVA transmission strategies general manager David Till told the Chattanooga Times Free Press the green power proposal "has great potential."

A spokesman for the company, Clean Line Energy Partners, said permission is being sought from regulators in Oklahoma and Arkansas for transmission lines that would stretch from Diamond, Okla., to the western edge of the TVA service territory in Memphis.

Spokesman Jimmy Glotfelty said Clean Line wants to be classified as a utility — allowing it to condemn property if needed — and wants to build the first of two 3,500-megawatt lines by 2015.

Glotfelty said Clean Line has asked state regulators in Oklahoma and Arkansas for permission to pursue the project.

"The goal is to work with TVA to drive down the price of wind energy and to make it more reliable and cost effective," Glotfelty said. "With the DC electric line, you will be assured that, when the wind blows, you will get that electricity almost instantaneously."

Despite big costs up front, Glotfelty said developers believe the DC lines will lessen power loss over the 800-mile distance compared with AC transmissions. High-voltage, direct current lines lose less power during transmission than their AC counterparts, although they do require more costly converters. Glotfelty said Clean Line plans to build $250 million converter stations at each end of the DC line.

He said construction is projected to generate 10,000 temporary jobs and open more long-term energy options for utilities.

"This could help dramatically reduce air emissions for TVA and other Southern utilities, and TVA could potentially even make some money wheeling power across its territory for other utilities," he said.

Till said Clean Line is among several wind and transmission companies seeking interconnection agreements with TVA.

A draft version of TVA's 20-year energy plan calls for up to 3,500 megawatts of wind and other renewable power. The utility already has contracted to buy 1,380 megawatts of wind energy from seven wind generators in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas and North and South Dakota.