What's the Rush?

So, Invenergy is contacting all landowners in Missouri to negotiate easement agreements for its Grain Belt Express transmission line.  What's the rush to acquire land rights, Invenergy?

MUST GET LAND RIGHTS IN MISSOURI!

Don't you think you should have an approved route through Illinois before acquiring any land along the route?  I mean, what if Illinois denies GBE's application for a CPCN, or the courts vacate it again?  GBE's nifty new website says it is "currently evaluating its options for regulatory approval in Illinois."  It's said that for months.  Invenergy used to say it needed to finalize its purchase of the failed merchant transmission project from Clean Line Energy Partners before it moved forward in Illinois.  However, that happened back in January.  It's the middle of June.  How much evaluation is needed?  Without an approved route through Illinois how would Invenergy even be sure that its Missouri route would connect?  Or that it's not buying land for a transmission project that cannot get to its end point in Indiana?

MUST GET LAND RIGHTS IN MISSOURI!

Invenergy needs the assent of the County Commission of each Missouri county it crosses.  That hasn't happened yet.  In fact, I can find no evidence that they're even trying.  What if a county does not assent and a re-route needs to happen?

MUST GET LAND RIGHTS IN MISSOURI!

Invenergy needs to have its interconnection studies completed and sign interconnection agreements with regional grid operators in MISO and PJM.  What's going on with those?

In PJM, GBE's original interconnection queue position (X3-028) for 3500 MW of power has been withdrawn.  So, what may have replaced it?  It looks like PJM has a couple of new HVDC merchant transmission requests in its queue, but studies are no where near final.

A recent position in Illinois seems to go to the GBE sweet spot:

But, wait.  There's one slightly older that goes to essentially the same place in Indiana:

Two HVDC merchant transmission connections at the same place?  Does anyone know of any other merchant transmission project that wants to inject that much energy at the same place GBE has been targeting?  Or is Invenergy hedging its bets?  Both queue positions are now active to inject 1,000 MW.  Isn't that curious?  Shouldn't a company want to know it could connect, and know how much that connection was going to cost before acquiring land?

MUST GET LAND RIGHTS IN MISSOURI!

And what's going on in MISO, where GBE lost its queue position a while back when MISO re-configured its queue?  Looks like there's been a trio of recent HVDC queue positions in Ralls and Randolph counties.

J1488 and J1490 connect at a point in Randolph Co.  J1489 connects to a point in Ralls Co., but it has been withdrawn.  Here's the two that are now active.

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Little bit of hedging going on in MISO as well?  Might as well, there have been no studies completed here, either.

So, let's add that up, shall we?  1,000 MW in PJM and 1,000 MW in MISO.  That equals 2,000 MW.  I thought GBE was going to have a capacity of 4,000 MW (500 for MISO and 3,500 for PJM)?

I'm not sure where GBE's queue positions are in either region, or how much they may ultimately connect.  But they need to acquire easements in Missouri?

MUST GET LAND RIGHTS IN MISSOURI!

I'm totally confused about Invenergy's urgency to acquire land rights in Missouri.  They don't have interconnection agreements, and they don't have county assents, and they don't have a permit in Illinois (and haven't applied for one).   I suppose if Invenergy wants to risk spending money acquiring land in Missouri when it doesn't have some pretty important parts of its project in place, it can certainly do that.  But, it makes no sense to me.  It didn't make any sense to Clean Line either, because they stopped trying to acquire land in any state eons ago.  Spending hundreds of millions on land acquisition for a project that might end up abandoned because it can't get through Illinois was even too stupid for Michael Skelly to do.  Yay, you, Invenergy!

But, hey, guess what?  Our federal government has extended the deadline AGAIN for the Production Tax Credit for wind farms started in 2016 and 2017.  That's right, these special projects now get FIVE years to complete the project, instead of the original four.  A project started in 2016 must be finished by the end of 2021, and a project started in 2017 must be finished by the end of 2022.  Rush, rush, rush!

MUST GET LAND RIGHTS IN MISSOURI!

And, hey, doesn't Invenergy still have an unfinished wind farm in the OK panhandle that it started in 2016 or 2017?  It was going to sell the finished 2,000 MW wind farm to American Electric Power as part of that company's "Wind Catcher" project.  Except Wind Catcher was rejected by state regulators and AEP moved on.  I wonder if Invenergy is ever going to finish that transmission-starved wind farm?  If it does, it can now collect something like $1.9B in production tax credits from the federal government.  But only if it finishes the project in the next couple of years.  Invenergy better get cracking on that one!  That's a lot of our tax dollars that could accomplish so much more in Invenergy's pockets, don't ya know?  Hurry, hurry, hurry!

Meanwhile, back in Missouri....

MUST GET LAND RIGHTS IN MISSOURI!

It's summer time and farmers are really busy.  They're probably outdoors a lot.  Working, ya know?  They've got priorities growing food for all of us.  Thank a farmer today!

And, one last thing...