S. F. transmission line developer eyes Texas

Pattern Energy wants to do what T. Boone Pickens couldn’t: Deliver Texas’ overabundance of wind power to less-windy states.

The San Francisco-based wind and transmission line developer aims to build a $1 billion, 400-mile transmission line to carry electricity generated by Texas wind turbines to Mississippi where it could be distributed across existing lines to Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and other states in the South.

Texas generates far more wind power than it can use and it’s building a series of power lines to deliver that power from rural areas where it’s produced to substations. Pattern would tap into electric stations near the Texas-Louisiana border.

"What it does is allows a new leg to be built that allows some of that power to be flowing into the South where there aren’t as many renewable energy opportunities," said Pattern CEO Mike Garland.

Pattern hopes the line will attain permits within two years and estimates it will take three years to build after that.

Scott Henry, CEO of SERC Reliability Corp., which enforces standards and regulations of transmission in the territory Pattern wants to connect to Texas, said there is precedent for interconnecting transmission territories, and Congress has made rules and offered incentives to encourage those connections to safeguard the electric grid and allow for more renewable energy development.

Read the full story in the Washington Business Journal.