At the beginning of the month, Clean Line issued a press release touting a "contract," or "agreement" with some Missouri municipal electric providers.  But Clean Line neglected to share this wonderful agreement.

Here it is.

What's in the agreement?

Up to 200 MW of transmission service from Clean Line's proposed southwestern Kansas converter station to a proposed DC/AC converter station in Ralls County, Missouri, available in 2 separate, differently priced 100 MW tranches.  Or even any other amount of transmission between 0 and 200 MW.  That's right, zero.  Because this isn't a firm contract at all.  Customer (MJMEUC) can change its mind at any time up to 60 days before "the date on which the Project begins commercial
operations and is capable of providing [...] Transmission Service" and elect not to purchase any transmission at all.  None.  Zero.

Price for transmission service from Kansas to Ralls County, MO: 

That's $1.167 per kwh, and $1.667 per kwh.  Per month.  With a guaranteed 2% price increase each year.

But that's not all the contract proposes to sell to MJMEUC, if its future "Notice of Decision" is to proceed with the contract.

The contract also proposes that MJMEUC will purchase up to 50 MW of transmission service between Ralls County, Missouri, and Clean Line's proposed converter station in Sullivan, Indiana (in the PJM RTO electricity market).  What is MJMEUC going to be loading onto this "clean" line to sell to customers in PJM?  Will it be "clean" electrons? 

Price for transmission service from Ralls County, MO to PJM:

The contract also requires MJMEUC "to file an
intervention and comments supporting FERC's acceptance of Transmission Provider's FERC [compliance] filing without modification or condition."

As well

Be a good witness.

So how much would it cost to transmit electricity all the way from Kansas to PJM on a "clean" line?

Add it up.

There is no actual electricity priced in this contract.  Customer shall enter into a separate power purchase agreement with a third party vendor at some future date.  Clean Line cannot sell electricity.

Arkansas News reports that Arkansas Rep. Steve Womack's APPROVAL Act bill passed out of the House Committee on Natural Resources today and is headed to the full House of Representatives.

Clean Line is "disappointed," reports Arkansas News.

Clean Line's "disappointment" manifested itself in a whiny litany of all the doom and destruction that is going to befall, not only the State of Arkansas, but the entire country, just before it takes over the world and ends existence as we know it.

Puh-leeeze.  Killing jobs?  How can it kill jobs Clean Line has yet to create?  Significant barriers to Arkansas businesses?  What about all the farm and other small businesses that your eminent domain right-of-way takings will demolish?  That's some significant job-killing barriers right there!  And what about all those current jobs creating energy in Arkansas that will be KILLED if the state imports electricity from another state?  Are we going to pit workers at "American" electric generation facilities against workers building "American" infrastructure?  Who's got more American flags behind their podium anyhow?

There's absolutely no truth to your claim that a failure to build a "Clean" line will raise electric power costs.  That's the biggest bunch of poppycock ever!  How much more will I pay if Plains & Eastern fails?  How about if Plains & Eastern and Grain Belt Express fail?  What if Plains & Eastern, Grain Belt Express AND Rock Island Clean Line fail?  What if Michael Skelly drowns in his own spit?  How much more will I pay?

Clean Line wouldn't know what "good policy" was if it bit them on the rear end.  The only thing Clean Line knows is disappointment.

Clean Line also claims:

Oh, right.  We remember.  The infamously desperate Change dot org petition.  But guess what?  I'll see your three thousand NIMBY "supporters" duped into signing something they didn't understand that puts energy infrastructure into someone else's backyard, and raise you more than 10,000 angry landowners who have no intention of signing voluntary right-of-way agreements for a "Clean" line.  As well, we all know that your "organizations and associations" are bought and paid for, or mistakenly believe there's a pile of gold for themselves to be had by tossing their neighbors under the bus.

But, you know what?  Somehow Arkansas News simply forgot to ask for any opposing views. 

Maybe they simply ran out of time.  It can't be that Arkansas News believes that the Sierra Club speaks for the public, can it?  The only thing more revolting than Clean Line's comment is Glen Hooks' blathering.  "Fundamental fairness," Glen?  Really?  What's fair about working your whole life to achieve the American dream of owning and enjoying property, only to have the rug yanked out from under you when a for-profit enterprise decides they want to use your property for their energy infrastructure project?  An energy infrastructure project for which there is no reliability, economic, or public policy need?  One premised on simple market speculation?  That is fundamentally unfair, Glen.  Nobody really cares if anyone is "fair" to a for-profit corporation.  Corporations aren't people.  Who cares how much investor money Skelly and his buddies have wasted trying to make their business model work?  Should ordinary folks just scratching by really care that super rich, silver spoon boys like Michael Zilkha and the Ziff brothers might lose a tiny part of their vast fortunes because it's not "fair" to deprive them of the right to condemn and take property in the name of the Federal government without state approval?

It's not "blatantly unfair" to the economy of the State of Arkansas to make a Texas for-profit owned by a handful of guys richer than Croesus have to negotiate for land rights in an open market without the threat of eminent domain.  That is blatantly unfair to the good people of Arkansas, your friends and neighbors.  Get your head out of some environmental dream world and take a look around, Glen.

Soooooo.....  thanks to Rep. Womack for doing something good for the people of Arkansas.  The people that elect him.  The folks he serves.

End:Public Tantrum.  But mine was much more entertaining, I'm sure.

I'm late for the funeral!  Ran across this article yesterday when searching for something totally unrelated, but it speaks so much truth, I couldn't dismiss it.  Back in September of last year, utility rag Fortnightly ran an article headlined, "The Rise and Fall of Big Transmission:  The alternatives may make more sense."  Author Steve Huntoon chronicles the big transmission building phase that was created by Congressional action to provide incredible financial incentives for Big Transmission.  In the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Congress tasked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission with creating a system to award incentives to transmission builders, such as double digit returns, the ability to collect project costs in rates during construction, guaranteed recovery in the event a Big Transmission project was abandoned, and many more (I'm not going to list them all here because only utility rate geeks would understand them all without lengthy explanation).  Creating incentives to build more transmission was a Congressional knee-jerk to the 2003 northeast blackout.  Nevermind that a complicated, expansive transmission system was to blame for the blackout, industry lobbyists spun the blackout its clients created through mismanagement into a huge financial windfall.  And the Big Transmission building boom began.

Huntoon walks the reader through the bad ideas that sprang from utility greed, analyzes why many of them failed, and applies his analysis to the remaining Big Transmission bad ideas to demonstrate why they, too, must fail.

And he does it in an entertaining and easily understood fashion.  Big Transmission becomes a proper noun, a name for an entity that took on a life of its own for a brief period in utility history.  But, in the end, Big Transmission had to die.

The author explains six points that make Big Transmission fail:

 Concise explanation of each point is in the article, so I won't belabor them here.

But the purist in me simply can't overlook a couple of glaring errors.  First, the Figure 2 national transmission overlay map is mislabeled.  Existing and New 765kV transmission have their colors reversed.  The Existing 765 system is red on the map, and the New 765 system is green (the legend in the upper right is incorrect).  It makes a great, big difference when studying the map to figure out which lines are new Big Transmission and which lines are incremental existing builds.  Second, the author places the PATH project on the wrong line in the Figure 1 Project Mountaineer Map.  He says, "PATH was essentially the western half of the #2 project in the overall Project Mountaineer plan."  No, PATH was the western half of the #3 project in the Project Mountaineer map.  PJM's original Project Mountaineer called for a Big Transmission line from the John Amos power station to the Deans substation in New Jersey.  PJM combined several proposals into the Frankenstein monster that became PATH, and then cut it off at Kemptown, with plans to build a separate Big Transmission project from Kemptown to Deans at a later date.

But, other than those two mapping boo-boos, the article gets the demise of the PATH project exactly right.  The demise of PATH has been wrongly portrayed by many people, with claims covering everything from reduced demand to coal plant retirements.  In his note 29, the author correctly notes that the demise of PATH was a combination of factors:

That's right... every factor, except Mt. Storm-Doubs, simply delayed the PATH project.  Mt. Storm-Doubs, and the "sophisticated statelevel opposition's" overwhelming support of this alternative to change the political climate supporting the PATH project, is what killed PATH.  Better, cheaper alternative that the people support?  It's the winning PATH of least resistance!

The realities of the "need" for PATH, and its opposition, merely delayed the project long enough for Dominion Virginia Power to step onto the stage with its proposed rebuild.  But even that wasn't simply about a better idea... the Mt. Storm Doubs line's existing towers were built out of a certain kind of steel that had not stood the test of time.  The tower bases were deteriorating and patchwork fixes were no longer effective.  The towers needed to be replaced before they started falling down.  And while they were replacing the towers, everything else got an upgrade that increased the line's thermal capacity 65% (allowing it to carry more power).  Dominion smartly took advantage of the PATH debacle to get its line rebuilt with minimal opposition, and even the outright support of affected landowners.

Would this situation repeat itself to kill other Big Transmission proposals?  Probably not.  But it does support the idea that incremental transmission projects and rebuilds are much easier to build than Big Transmission.  So, why does the utility industry continue to propose and/or support Big Transmission?  Because it comes with Big Profits and they're willing to risk protracted planning and permitting processes in order to increase their profits.  It's not about building reliability, economic benefits for consumers, or even "cleaner" power...  and all the risk of Big Transmission ends up on the backs of consumers.  What's not to like for them?  The facts in this article -- Big Transmission must fail.

There's even some hard truth about the last of the Big Transmission projects that have yet to realize they're dead.  Clean Line Energy came up with its idea to build thousands of miles of Big Transmission to ship renewables from coast to coast in 2009, when Big Transmission was in its heyday.  But, unlike utility proposals where risk and cost is shouldered by ratepayers, Clean Line has spent millions of dollars of private investment cash to keep its idea alive.  Once Clean Line gives up, its investors lose everything.  There is no federal guarantee to recover sunk costs on speculative, market based Big Transmission.  And Clean Line, itself, will die along with its projects, and its executives currently living high on the hog of private investor cash, will be in the unemployment line.  This is what keeps Clean Line on life support long after it's been pronounced brain dead.  And here's why Clean Line will never happen:

And there is no value added by a Clean Line.  Clean Line stupidly demonstrated just this point to the City of Hannibal, Missouri, earlier this year with its chart of wind options for the city.  The Clean Line prepared (and tweaked) chart showed that wind delivered over the existing incremental transmission system was just as cheap as wind delivered over a "clean" line.

Why would any company buy capacity from a risky new transmission line when existing lines are just as cheap?  This probably explains why Clean Line has no customers.  And without customers, Clean Line's Big Transmission will also fail.

This.

Poor, sick bastard.  Does anyone know why transmission pushes Michael Skelly's debauchery button this way?  Moreover, why would he brag about his sick, sick turn on in public this way?

So, here's the sound track playing in Skelly's head when he gets his sexy on with transmission towers

And here's what the rest of us hear

Dude, get some therapy.  You're sick!

...errr, customer.  This morning, Clean Line Energy Partners had an imaginary customer.

So reported "Recharge News," which bills itself as "the multi-platform news service for senior professionals in solar, wind and related sectors. It balances in-depth coverage of wind and solar with relevant news from the wider global renewables industry."

Balance?  Recharge News thought this article was "balanced?"  It only tells one side of the story... Skelly's side.  Apparently the reporter did absolutely no fact checking.

"Utility Energy" doesn't exist.  There's no company named "Utility Energy," therefore it has not agreed to purchase 500 MW of power from Plains & Eastern.  Or maybe the reporter MEANT to report that "Utility Entergy has agreed to purchase...".  But that would also be untrue.  Neither Entergy nor Clean Line's imaginary friend, Utility Energy, have agreed to purchase so much as a glow stick from Plains & Eastern.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda.

It's pretty doubtful that Clean Line will "begin construction on Plains & Eastern next year."  It's pretty hard to construct a transmission line on land you don't own.  What Recharge News fails to report is that landowners are refusing all Clean Line's advances.

Get yourself one of these nifty signs from Golden Bridge, LLC!

And guess what?  Clean Line does NOT have eminent domain authority, nor authority to enter private property along the route.  No "studies."  No "surveys."  No land agent visits or calls.  Landowners can simply tell Clean Line and its contractors to go away.  And they are.  They certainly are.  It's not looking like Clean Line is going to have any land rights for its project by next year.  Because the only way Clean Line can get land rights from resistant owners is to ask the U.S. Department of Energy to use its authority to condemn and take their land.  And the U.S. DOE agreement stipulates that Clean Line must have firm, contracted customers, not just imaginary friends, before DOE will even consider getting involved.  And even if they do, DOE must start all over again attempting to negotiate with the landowner.  Think all this can be accomplished by next year?  Not.  It's going to take YEARS and YEARS, if it ever happens at all.

And there Skelly stands, waving his hands around and making up imaginary customers, like "Utility Energy."  He doesn't have any real customers.  And he won't have any real customers, because all the good imaginary customers will only "...commit once they see the project meeting critical milestones towards the start of construction."  But Clean Line won't be meeting any milestones until it has land rights.  And it can't get land rights until it has customers.  Chicken, egg.  Rock:Clean Line:Hard Place.

Skelly needs to quit making crap up.  And the trade press needs to stop reporting made up crap.

Imaginary friends are only cute when you're five.

Rural America has had enough urban arrogance.  But that doesn't stop these small-world buffoons from pontificating arrogant theories that disparage rural America.  Perhaps we need to start arranging some rural summer camp experiences for urban energy planners with really crazy ideas about what happens beyond the city limits?  Get out there, urban dwellers, get out to the countryside, and find out how Mayberry lives!

In a recent article in The Atlantic about building a "nationwide" electric grid to be used as a quasi-storage device for renewable energy, David Byrne, manager of integrated planning for Tallahassee, Florida's, city electric system opined that Mayberry isn't "really living."

Well, isn't that parochial, David?  What makes you think that your little workaday city world epitomizes "living," and that Mayberry's daily struggle to eke out a living from the land they husband (for your ultimate benefit, I might add)  isn't "really living."  I think if you expanded your horizons a bit, you'd find that Mayberrians are the ones who are really "living," as nature intended.

Why not explore and develop "energy resources that you would like to have" in your own urban neighborhoods or region?  Is that because you're just a NIMBY at heart?  You want all the benefits of "energy resources," without any of the sacrifice that come along with them.  You want someone else to sacrifice their lifestyle to provide for your own?  Keep searching for that "miracle."  It's as close as your own backyard, Tallahassee!

Well, hey there!  Renewable energy wonks have the same "saying" as transmission opponents.  It's about time we all got on the same page!

At a FERC Techincal Conference regarding interconnection procedures last week, Dean Gosselin, NextEra Energy’s vice president of business management, said:

Right.  Projects that struggle for years to gain approval, financing, and customers aren't good projects that deserve to come to fruition.

So what in the world is Clean Line doing still trying to shove its projects through?  This company has been "developing" its projects since 2009.  That's 7 long years, and they're still no closer to fruition.  Even the Federal government won't undertake massive eminent domain condemnations for a project that has no customers, and for which no voluntary easements have been signed.

Time kills all projects, even yours, Clean Line.  You're like that slimy green stuff in the back of the vegetable drawer of project ideas -- so past its prime that it lacks physical substance and smells horrendous.  Clean Line is way past its expiration date.

To justify thousands of miles of new transmission "for renewables," NIMBYs often claim it is "for the greater good."  The NIMBYs who champion the use of eminent domain for renewable energy only support it because it is "Not In My Backyard."  They have all sorts of specious arguments to support their position, such as:

None of these arguments is effective to convince landowners to sacrifice themselves and grant easements for the "greater good" of others in far off places.

Our country was electrified through the use of eminent domain.  It was the only way to provide electric service to all who wanted it.  Now everyone has electricity, and those who want new service choose whether to pay the cost of extending electric lines to serve their property, or building their own generation onsite.  That is a simple economic argument -- would the cost of extending centralized generation to the property be more or less than building and maintaining distributed generation to serve the property.  In many parts of the world, distributed generation is the option that makes sense.

But utility eminent domain is no longer about providing individuals with reliable basic service.  It's now oftentimes used to provide lower cost electric service, or to provide a different "renewable" kind of generation required by public policies.  This is where utility eminent domain starts sliding down the slippery slope of "public use."  Can "the public" necessity for more economic or environmentally responsible electricity trump the right of the individual to own and enjoy property?  Where does the responsibility of "the public" to be responsible for their own footprint enter into the equation?

If the current electric supply for "the public" in one location is more expensive than electric supply for "the public" in another location, does that give utilities the right to take private property in order to levelize electric prices between localities?  In such a scheme, consumers enjoying cheaper electricity must sacrifice by paying more for their electricity in order that other consumers in a different region can enjoy cheaper prices.  And landowners in between these two regions must sacrifice their personal property to grant easements for new transmission lines to effect this economic benefit for one group of consumers.

The same argument can be made about transmission lines "for renewables" (as if transmission lines could segregate "clean" from "dirty" energy - it's all the same when it's transmitted).  Consumers who live in regions where renewables are cheap and plentiful enjoy lower electric prices.  When those renewables are exported to other regions where renewables have failed to properly and economically develop (notice I did not say regions where there are no renewables, because such places simply don't exist), it raises prices for consumers who previously enjoyed low prices because supply exceeded demand.  And it requires them to make a sacrifice so that consumers in other regions can enjoy the low-priced renewables they failed to develop themselves.

We get here because of electricity markets.  Electric markets are run by organizations who also control electric transmission.  Electric transmission is the only tool these organizations have to control their artificial electric markets by moving electricity around their own region, or to other regions.  Electric transmission organizations cannot order new generation to be built as a way to control their markets, lower prices, or support environmental "public policies."  Eminent domain cannot be used to force new generation, but it can be used to force new transmission.  This mismatch between the power of a "market" to force transmission, but not generation, makes no sense.

If a particular region needs renewable generation, or lower cost electricity, an unfettered market would force it to be built.  Instead, the current electric "market" forces transmission before market forces can be allowed to do their work to encourage new generation.  This isn't a true "market," it's top down force that causes unnecessary sacrifice on the part of individuals who will receive no benefit in order to provide for the needs of others.  If regions that have failed to develop their own renewable resources must pay more to develop them now, then that's the cost of environmentally-friendly consumption.  If regions with more expensive power need cheaper prices, then they should build cheaper generators, or change policies that suppress generation and drive up its cost.  Example:  The east coast cities have traditionally relied on coal-fired generators in the Ohio Valley to supply them with cheap electricity because their own environmental restrictions or costs imposed on coal-fired generators prevented them from generating economic coal-fired electricity in their own neighborhood.  The Ohio Valley destroyed its people and environment in order to ship cheap electricity east to serve the cities.  Now the cities don't want any more coal-fired power, but they have been trained to be helpless leeches, incapable of providing for their own electric needs.  Many of these NIMBYs continue to think that other regions enjoy sacrificing themselves for city needs.  They somehow think other regions enjoy some economic benefit from serving them.  One only need look at West Virginia as an example that any economic benefit from the sacrifice didn't flow to the people -- it went into the pockets of the out-of-state companies who exploited the state's natural resources for the last 100 years.

Climate change has happened gradually over hundreds of years of our industrial expansion.  It cannot be changed overnight.  The big rush to switch to renewables won't happen quickly.  And it certainly shouldn't be used as a basis to require sacrifice of personal property rights to allow new renewable energy projects.  Renewables will develop where they are welcomed by people who want to pay to use them.  Arguing that development of more expensive local renewables isn't worthwhile effectively rejects climate change arguments entirely.

And, again, we have another mismatch between generation and transmission when it comes to renewables.  The siting of renewable energy generators is an entirely voluntary process -- no eminent domain can be used to obtain land for wind farms, for instance.  In that case, renewable generation developers have to operate in a voluntary real estate market to acquire land for their projects.  These landowners are compensated at a rate that entices their voluntary participation, oftentimes receiving royalties and other long-term financial compensation for the use of their land.  But voluntarily-sited renewable generators may require new transmission lines to tap into existing transmission systems, and request the use of eminent domain to get there.  On the one hand, landowners hosting generators are well-compensated because their participation is voluntary, but on the other hand, landowners hosting the transmission lines that make generation profits happen are involuntarily forced to take one-time "market value" payments and sacrifice their property.  Everyone participating in the production of getting renewable generation to market is not compensated equally.

And here's another incongruity... when eminent domain is used to acquire land for transmission lines planned by regional organizations and cost allocated to all ratepayers in a region, the ratepayers realize the benefit of the cheaper land acquisition accomplished by eminent domain through "cost of service" transmission rates.  However, new "merchant" transmission projects proposed are not supported by cost of service rates, but by market rates.  A merchant project is financed wholly by its investors, not ratepayers.  It depends on market prices for transmission service in order to set its rates through a voluntary negotiation process.  The users of its line negotiate a price for service.  The merchant transmission owner can collect whatever rate it can negotiate in this voluntary market.  In that case, any lower land acquisition values created by eminent domain flow directly to the investors.  Eminent domain does not affect the market for transmission service -- that market remains unaffected whether land acquisition for transmission rights of way is voluntary or coerced through eminent domain.  The merchant transmission ratepayers do not realize any financial benefit from the use of eminent domain for land acquisition.  A merchant transmission project is a market-based endeavor -- it's success depends entirely on market forces.  Therefore, why isn't a merchant transmission project's land acquisition also subject to the same market forces?  A market-based merchant project should be required to negotiate land acquisition prices with voluntary landowners in the same free market in which it negotiates prices for its transmission with voluntary users.

Those who casually spout off that new transmission is "for the greater good" and therefore deserving of landowner sacrifice through the acquisition of rights of way through eminent domain aren't aren't dealing with a full deck.  It's all so much self-interested hogwash.  Who determines when transmission is "for the greater good?"  Not the folks who stand to benefit from it.  The "greater good" includes everyone.  Equally.

​

Depends on who you ask.  Corporations hoping to profit from building infrastructure on private property say that any one who opposes their plan in a "NIMBY" (Not In My Backyard).  It's nothing more than a stupid attempt at name-calling by the propagandist in order to paint anyone who stands in the way of corporate profits as selfish, uninformed and unacceptable in order to have others disregard their opinion quite apart from the facts of the matter.

The NIMBY label is nothing new.

What is new is the degrees of NIMBY-ism.  One of the arguments against NIMBY-ism is that the NIMBY will benefit from the infrastructure.  But what happens when infrastructure is proposed for the backyard of someone who does not benefit from it?  Are they still a NIMBY?

And what happens when a NIMBY who will benefit from the infrastructure objects, but insists on still receiving the benefits?

Enter the silliest academic "study" I've read in a long, long time.  Dr. Sanja Lutzeyer and Dr. Laura Taylor of NCSU, along with Dr. Daniel Phaneuf of the University of Wisconsin, recently released study called “The Amenity Costs of Offshore Wind Farms: Evidence from a Choice Experiment."

The study is the result of a survey of North Carolina beach vacationers.  It asked them if they would pay more to rent a beach house with a view of offshore wind farms.  No, they would not.  In fact, most of the beach tourists wanted a discount on their rental if they had to look at offshore wind farms, especially at night when they are lit up with red, blinking lights.  The study concludes that building wind farms off the shore of North Carolina will destroy its tourism industry.

The study also shared that the respondents generally supported wind energy, but Not In My Ocean View.

Where do these folks think wind energy they want to benefit from gets generated?  Is it supposed to be generated by wind farms in someone else's back yard who won't benefit from it?  Are others supposed to have their views, their night time skyline, their farm business, and their tourism destroyed so that these beach goers can have wind energy produced by wind farms that they don't have to look at? 

I'm sure this same attitude (or worse) would also be applied to huge, honking, new transmission lines proposed to transmit far away wind energy to the North Carolina beaches.  But, of course, nobody is stupid enough to propose a gigantic HVDC transmission line along North Carolina's coast.

But someone has been stupid enough to propose several enormous transmission lines on virgin land (known as "green field" projects) stretching through the back yards and working farms of thousands of folks in the Midwest for the benefit of those in Carolina beach shacks.

Here's the take away... if you like wind energy, put it in your own back yard.  If that costs a little more, then that's the price you pay to be "green."  Don't expect a whole bunch of folks who will receive no benefit to make a sacrifice for you.

Who's the ultimate NIMBY?

What is it Clean Line Energy Partners says about the necessity for its transmission projects?

Clean Line continually spins the yarn that wind energy will not develop in its "resource areas" without the construction of its "Clean" lines.

Here's a map of the "resource area" for Clean Line's Grain Belt Express project.

GBE's "resource area" roughly includes Ford and Clark Counties, Kansas.

Clean Line says no wind will develop there without a "Clean" Line to transmit it to population centers.

But it did.

Last Friday, a huge press conference was held to announce that the Cimarron Bend wind farm was fully subscribed and under construction in Clark County Kansas, just south of Ford County.

On its website, the developer initially proposed that Cimarron Bend is a "candidate" in GBE's resource area that may "connect" with GBE.

However, GBE is still bumping along trying to get permitted in Missouri, after being denied last summer.  The developers of Cimarron Bend, however, moved on.

Customers of Cimarron Bend are the Kansas City, Kansas, Board of Public Works (200 MW) and Google (200 MW), who both signed bundled power purchase agreements for Cimarron Bend's 400 MW capacity.  Cimarron Bend didn't need GBE in order to be developed at all.  There's plenty of existing transmission to move the power to Kansas City and wherever Google plans to use it, and the project is expected to come online in early 2017.

Kansas wind energy from the GBE resource area CAN be developed without GBE after all.  And more importantly, it will be consumed by Kansans.  Grain Belt Express proposes to export 4,000 MW of wind energy from the resource area out-of-state, with none available for use by Kansans, who also like lower bills and cleaner energy.

Good for BPU, good for Kansas City, good for Kansans.

But not so good for GBE, whose resource area is going to be further developed for use by Kansans while the company remains stuck in permit hell.  The world doesn't wait for Clean Line, and every day that passes lessens the company's relevance.

So, why did Cimarron Bend initially think its project was a candidate for GBE, when plenty of opportunity to sell its energy to Kansans existed?  Because

Cimarron Bend needed GBE to market itself to a wider pool of customers, in order to maximize its profit.  "States further east" are participants in other, higher-priced electric markets, and GBE was convenient to get it there.  Of course, GBE also makes a profit by doing so.

GBE is nothing but a profit-making enterprise designed to profit off wind farms, who maximize their own profits by selling into higher priced markets.  GBE is not "necessary" to develop wind resources in Kansas, or anywhere else.  It's only necessary to increase wind energy profits for a select group of investors.

And utilities in those "states further east" aren't signing up to purchase expensive, imported wind power.  At a Transmission Summit earlier this month, Southern Company's Vice President of Energy Policy had this to say:

So, congratulations to Tradewind Energy for successfully developing its Cimarron Bend wind project for benefit of Kansans!

Just one more nail in Clean Line's coffin.