North-south power transmission line plans could be resurrected

Kevin Rademacher

Friday, April 15, 2005 | 11:10 a.m.

Long-stalled plans for an electricity transmission line between Northern Nevada and Southern Nevada could be revived.

LS Power Associated LLC, which is developing a coal-fire power plant in White Pine County, has reached an agreement with Idaho Power Co. that would allow it to buy the rights to the Southwest Intertie Project.

Idaho Power in 1994 received a right-of-way grant from the Bureau of Land Management to the SWIP, a 500-mile transmission line that would run from the Midpoint Substation near Twin Falls, Idaho, to the Dry Lake substation northeast of Las Vegas.

In a statement, Idaho Power said it had not developed the line because of "market conditions," but it said that the company has maintained its rights related to SWIP.

"The work we've done to date provides the developer with a terrific head start," LaMont Keen, president of Idaho Power, said in the statement.

That work Idaho Power has done includes "a seven-year environmental study, scores of public meetings and collaborative discussions," Keen said.

"With the growing demand in the West, this is an ideal time to hand off to White Pine Energy to develop the project," Keen added.

White Pine Energy Associates LLC is the LS Power affiliate handling the Northern Nevada power plant project.

The announcement between Idaho Power and LS Power was made just five days after the governors of Nevada, California, Utah and Wyoming announced a memorandum of understanding that launched the Frontier Line project.

The Frontier Line is a Western transmission line designed to increase reliability and ease bottlenecks throughout the West. That line also proposed a connection between Nevada Power Co. of Las Vegas and Sierra Pacific Power Co. of Reno.

The link would allow Nevada utilities, which are currently under a state mandate to develop renewable energy resources, to export that "green" power to other states.

The line also would give Nevada Power access to geothermal resources in Northern Nevada while giving Northern Nevada access to solar power resources under development in the south.