General Manager Bob Stevenson said Clean Line contacted the BPW about a month ago, offering the utility a draft letter of intent. Clean Line hasn't made a firm proposal, but Stevenson called prospective prices "very attractive." He declined to disclose them, citing confidentiality, but Lawlor estimated Grain Belt Express could deliver electricity in the 3- to 4-kilowatt-hour range.

Starting Line now hears about a number of people interested in running for Rick Olson’s house seat. That includes Beth Conley, Marc Wallace and Connie Boesen. Conley works at Clean Line Energy Partners, and has a history of working with wind energy projects.

The mitigation proposal includes more than $52 million in funding for Jamestown Island, Hog Island and the Captain John Smith Historic Trail District. The money would fund projects such as seawall rehabilitation and replacement at Historic Jamestowne to help combat the impacts of sea-level rise and erosion, according to the draft mitigation plan obtained by the Virginia Gazette.

The mitigation plan proposal includes $15.5 million in funding for water quality improvement including erosion and sediment control in the James River. Battlefield and landscape conservation projects would get $12 million, including government and private lands associated with the Battle of Yorktown, according to the proposal. More than $4 million would go to protecting emergent marsh at the Hog Island Wildlife Management Area.

Electricity on the PJM grid normally flows from west to east. The major centers for electricity demand are the big metropolises along the Eastern Seaboard, at the eastern edge of the PJM system. There aren’t any power plants located in the Atlantic Ocean, therefore power that isn’t generated locally has to come from the west. As it happens, PJM’s western states have abundant, low-cost wind power — at night-time, wind power is so plentiful compared to demand that the price essentially falls to zero. The main factor limiting East Coast access to that cheap wind is the limited capacity of the transmission grid to carry it.

In the United States, 53% of the nation’s population lives in coastal areas, where energy costs and demands are high and land-based renewable energy resources are often limited. Abundant offshore wind resources have the potential to supply immense quantities of renewable energy to major U.S. coastal cities, such as New York City and Boston.  

Offshore winds tend to blow harder and more uniformly than on land.

Craig Lang of the Windward Iowa has written in support of the project, citing the benefits to wind energy development in the state. An Iowa coalition that supports increased wind energy development in the state. The group--Windward Iowa--also supports increased transmission development as an essential part of new renewable development.

As an Iowa resident who understands the importance of agriculture in our communities, I appreciate Clean Line Energy for taking every possible step to ensure that the planned transmission line route has a minimal impact on farmland and homes.

As a farmer and an Iowan, I think it is reasonable to ask a small group of individuals to give back in order to benefit our whole state and the nation

CapX2020 is a joint initiative of 11 transmission owning utilities in Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin to upgrade and expand the electric transmission grid to ensure continued reliable and affordable service. The five 230 and 345 kV projects provide needed transmission capacity to support new generation outlet, including renewable energy. CapX2020 includes electric cooperatives, municipals and investor-owned utilities. The CapX2020 lines are projected to cost more than $2 billion and cover nearly 800 miles. When discussions and planning activities started in 2004, the institutional environment for planning for large scale transmission expansion was not mature and major issues such as cost allocation and recovery were unresolved. The diverse coalition of CapX2020 utilities, environmental groups, renewable energy developers, regulators and others was able to agree on regulatory reforms that addressed many of the issues at the state level. Meanwhile, MISO, through stakeholder processes was able to address issues related to cost allocation and recovery. Extensive public engagement activities were effective in building support for the projects and allowed for a timely and relatively non-controversial permitting process.  It was during construction that some of the most difficult challenges were encountered. In this session, you will hear some of the details of how these issues were successfully addressed as the projects near completion on schedule and on budget.

In the business of siting electric utility infrastructure, opposition is the norm rather than the exception. While customers typically love an electric utility's product, they almost universally loathe the infrastructure necessary to deliver that product. In this session, we will discuss how to:

Acknowledge a customer's concern

Discern when a customer's concern cannot be resolved

Steer an opponent toward providing constructive input

Be credible

Become unflappable

The purchase power agreement (PPA) [with Public Utilities Commission of Ohio] was the last missing piece: balance sheet shored up; equity overhang removed — we see no more surprises for investors.

"FirstEnergy’s proposal will put safeguards in place to protect our customers from increased price volatility that’s expected to occur in the years ahead," said Doug Colafella, a company spokesman.

... other utilities will want profit guarantees in Ohio and in neighboring states. This, in turn, will undermine a competitive market in which many companies do not have the resources to secure government help the way that FirstEnergy does.

Independent power companies competing against FirstEnergy for customers in Ohio and throughout the 13-state region where high-voltage transmission lines are controlled by PJM Interconnection are not asking for special deals like FirstEnergy is, said Glen Thomas, president of PJM Power Providers Group.

"Our members are competing to provide the most efficient and economic power to consumers in Ohio as possible. We oppose this deal.  We see it as destroying all the benefits Ohio has gained from competitive markets.

"By going down a road where you subsidize plants that are not able to compete economically with other plants, you crowd out these economic advantages as well as send a terrible signal to the market that the best way ... is not to operate at most efficient levels but to seek a bail out from the PUCO."

Now, Clean Line argues that an unknown number of landowners have expressed a preference to wait until after a Board decision on the franchises to sign easement agreements. This means that if all issues are addressed in a single hearing, Clean Line will have to prepare more Exhibit E applications than it will under the two-hearing process. For this reason, Clean Line argues, administrative efficiency would be advanced by the two-hearing approach. Clean Line does not offer any indication of the number of such landowners, other than “many.”

It appears Clean Line could have provided the number of these landowners without violating the confidentiality of the individual negotiations. In the absence of a substantiated number, it is difficult to accept that this group represents a significant part of the overall number of easements Clean Line needs to acquire.

In all, this argument for increased administrative efficiency is speculative at best, and outweighed by the inefficiencies associated with having two hearings to decide issues that are normally decided in a single hearing.

Further, a number landowners wish to have clarity on the Board’s decision about the Project in general before negotiating a parcel-specific easement.

Under choppy waters was the spawning ground of the Atlantic sturgeon, a large, prehistoric-looking fish credited with saving the early settlers from starvation. So abundant were the fish then that members of native tribes would wade into the river and catch them by hand. By 40 years ago, however, the sturgeon were thought to be wiped out because of decades of overfishing. Today, the fish are struggling to make a comeback as a federally protected endangered species.

The thumping percussion of the pile driver is likely to disturb not only the sturgeon, but also other anadromous fish that live their early lives in rivers before moving on to the ocean as adults.

“Every sturgeon killed by ship strike or a tower being pounded into the ground in this important area is a step backward in the effort to recover this population,” he said.