Calif. to get fix for electric line bottleneck

- The federal government reached a deal on Thursday with energy companies to build a $300 million transmission line in central California to relieve a chronic bottleneck in moving electricity supplies between the northern and southern parts of the state.

Construction on the so-called Path 15 project, which was announced by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, will begin in the spring of 2003 and may be completed by summer 2004.

The project, which would boost capacity by 1,500 megawatts, will involve PG&E Corp., Kinder Morgan Inc. , the Williams Cos. Trans-Elect Inc., Mirant Corp and the federally owned Western Area Power Administration.

Path 15, an 84-mile stretch of electricity transmission lines in the state's Central Valley, has contributed to California's chronic power shortages.

The outdated power lines in that area do not have enough capacity to carry electricity between Southern California and the northern part of the state during peak power demand times, especially during the winter.

"I am extremely pleased to announce that we are taking a major step toward a solution that will relieve the pressure on this choke point in the transmission grid," Abraham said in Palo Alto, California.

Expanding Path 15 to include a new 500 kilovolt line would boost transmission by about 1,500 megawatts -- or roughly enough power to supply 1.5 million households.

When the upgrade is finished, the lines will be able to carry 5,400 megawatts of power for 5.4 million households.

With the Path 15 fix, we begin to expand the gates of power and let economic opportunity and economic well-being flow through the Central Valley and throughout California," said Trans-Elect executive vice president Bob Mitchell.

The upgrade calls for a 45-45-10 ownership split of the third power line between public and private firms with the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) retaining 10 percent for its role as project manager and acquiring the land rights from property owners to hold the power line.

The WAPA is a federal agency within the Energy Department that sells electricity from federal water projects in 15 western states and operates 17,000 miles of transmission lines.

Under an agreement signed by the partners, details of the project, including the firms' obligations, cost estimates and transmission rights will be developed over the next 90 days.

The Bush administration's national energy policy, released last May, recommended that the Energy Department take action to explore relieving the constraints on Path 15.

Thirteen proposals were submitted over the summer in response to the federal government's request for investors to build the Path 15 expansion and help relieve the serious electric bottleneck.