After fifteen years of planning and enabling, construction will start this year for the TransWest Express high-voltage transmission line—a landmark expansion regarding Wyoming’s electric power export industry to markets in the American Southwest and one of the largest transmission upgrades to the western grid in years.
The Bureau of Land Management awarded TransWest Express LLC a “notice to proceed” in April, culminating years of work and millions of dollars invested in a “vision” to bring Wyoming’s renewable energy potential to the rest of the Western region, according to company officials.
“It’s a day that’s been long coming,” TransWest Express Company Vice President and COO Roxane Perruso said. A celebratory event will be held on Tuesday, she said, with a special appreciation for the Carbon County community’s significant support. That support represented a leap-of-faith for a region with its cultural and economic roots in coal.
Electric power project
Although TransWest Express LLC seemed to be mired in planning and a painstaking bureaucratic permitting procedure that included obtaining rights-of-way from numerous entities over the 732-mile route, its sister company, the remarkable Power Company of Wyoming, was doing initial construction work on the wind farm that will supply power to the line. The Anschutz Organization owns both companies.
The Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind energy project will span some 320,000 acres in Carbon County and generate 4,000 megawatts of electricity—representing about 28% of Wyoming’s current electrical generation capacity today, according to U.S. Energy Information data. It will be the largest onshore wind energy facility in North America, according to the Utility of Wyoming.
Phased construction of the 732-mile TransWest Express high-voltage transmission system will start later this year, according to company officials. The first phase includes a new substation in Carbon County. After that, crews will erect towers and thread high-voltage lines to a terminus in Delta, Utah. That portion of the project will initially begin moving up to 1,500 megawatts of wind-generated electricity via direct current by December 2027.
The next phase includes another transmission line to connect to powerline systems in southern Nevada. By the end of 2028, the final stages of the project will increase to 3,500 megawatts and include system interconnections in the Southwest, according to TransWest Express authorities.
“These components will provide important new bulk transmission capacity and connectivity with the PacifiCorp system in Wyoming, with the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power and Intermountain Power systems in Utah, and with the NV Energy system in Nevada and the California Independent System Operator,” Perruso said.
New energetic
Aside from carrying power from Wyoming’s Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind facility, TransWest also can serve as an onramp for other energy projects, such as the hydrogen energy proposal on the Intermountain Power Project in Utah, and potentially new nuclear power facilities, according to TransWest authorities.
“As Wyoming explores more carbon-free [energy] options, we will be that pathway that allows these resources to get to the market,” Perruso said. “We’re opening a new market for renewables and also creating a pathway for future carbon-free resources.”
Some clean energy and climate advocates hail the TransWest Express project as a vital step in “decarbonizing” the western grid. Once completed, the transmission line can serve as an “anchor,” increasing connectivity between large demand centers—southern Nevada, Utah, and southern California—and rural areas that can generate commercial-scale renewable energy, such as Wyoming’s abundant capacity for wind power generation.
“This is an example of infrastructure that is needed and should be built,” Western Resource Advocates Deputy Director of Regional Markets Vijay Satyal said. “It is definitely essential for the West.”
Together, the TransWest line and CCSM wind facility represent a new dynamic—and a gamble that few agencies have been willing or able to take on, according to Satyal and other utility industry watchers. It’s an unusual move that requires a lot of patience with the permitting process, according to one TransWest Express official, as well as deep pockets, according to others.
Proceeding independent
Many consumers don’t get to choose their own electricity provider, whether they’re powering a home in Casper or a bike restaurant in Evanston, but the TransWest project diverges from that paradigm. For example, PacifiCorp, which also operates as Rocky Mountain Power, is one of several electric utility monopolies in Wyoming. It serves captive customers in certain areas because, in most cases, it owns the power infrastructure exclusively.
As a monopoly, PacifiCorp is regulated by the Wyoming Public Service Commission, and it has service territories in 5 other states. It is required to justify and obtain approval for its electricity rates. In return, it has a guaranteed, captive ratepayer base to fund system operations and necessary upgrades.
There are variations, such as rural electric cooperatives operating under different rules and authorities. However, the same geographically limited market for grid infrastructure plays out everywhere in Wyoming, the West, and the nation. While utilities like PacifiCorp are transitioning from coal to cleaner forms of electricity generation in their own service territories, Satyal said that’s not enough to achieve the level of integration between hundreds of individual utility systems required to enable new forms of renewable and low-carbon energy.
The approach behind Electric Company of Wyoming and TransWest Express is to operate as independent entities, selling and delivering renewable and low-carbon energy to any utility it can reach from the three major operating regions that TransWest will connect to on the western grid.
“We’re broadening the [Wyoming and western] market to include these new interconnections and customers,” Perruso said. “We’re not limited by a service territory.
“That also means it’s risky,” Perruso continued. “That’s why you don’t see [a lot of] developers doing this because it’s a high-risk and entrepreneurial idea.”
Major gamble, full pockets
Unlike a regulated utility, neither TransWest Express LLC nor Electric Company of Wyoming has a captive ratepayer base to leverage upfront financing or a guaranteed paying customer base for ongoing operations. That’s where both the risk and the deep pockets come in.
Both companies are affiliates of the Denver-based Anschutz Corporation. The worldwide oil, investment, sports, real estate, entertainment, and production company led by Philip Anschutz is valued at around $12.8 billion, according to Forbes.
“Thanks to the deep pockets or the financial muscle the owners had, they survived the long permitting process to comply with all the environmental requirements,” Satyal said. “This is a good example of a company looking at the value proposition and the financial benefits of exporting Wyoming-rich wind and getting into the decarbonization of the future.”
TransWest Express doesn’t yet have customers lined up to take the energy it plans to deliver from Wyoming. But Satyal explained that the rush to renewables to meet self-imposed carbon emission standards, especially in the Southwest, is a good opportunity with a potentially lucrative payoff.
“God forbid California has a reliability crisis. This line would be a very important savior in delivering power—and at a higher profit,” he said. “That’s competition at work, which I think is what Wyoming wants to encourage—a competitive market.”
Wyoming Energy Authority Executive Director Rob Creager agrees.
“Our state is in the business of producing and selling clean energy,” Creager said. “So projects like TransWest Express opening up entirely new customer markets for our energy products have enormous potential for Wyoming.”
Dustin Bleizeffer is a Report for America Corps member covering energy and climate for WyoFile. He has worked as a coal miner, an oilfield mechanic, and has extensive experience as a statewide reporter and editor.
