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$120 million Xcel power line to feed Front Range needs

Gargi Chakrabarty

Published March 12, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Xcel Energy will build a $120 million power line to carry electricity from the north and northeastern part of the state, straddling the Wyoming and Nebraska state lines, to the Front Range.

New transmission lines are nothing new, but this project is different. The line will be built in anticipation of new power sources - such as wind farms or natural gas plants, all serving Denver's growing need for power.

The line also will help lighten the constraints in existing lines. Xcel ratepayers will start paying a small portion of the cost of the line as soon as the utility begins construction, likely in 2010.

"If we didn't put up this line, we wouldn't be able to add any more capacity of power generation in the area," said Xcel spokesman Tom Henley.

Critics say that state rules allowing utilities to recover the cost of a project even before it is completed and deemed useful run contrary to the interest of ratepayers.

"Cost is a significant factor for customers," said Stan Lewandowski, general manager of Intermountain Rural Electric Association, a rural electric co-op. "When you start building facilities and start charging customers even before the facilities are in use or useful, people will get fed up.

"In a fragile economy as in present time, the last thing you need to do is pile costs on customers."

Xcel's proposed 345-kilovolt transmission line, from its Pawnee substation near Brush to the Smoky Hill substation, will be able to handle 500 megawatts of new power generation. It is scheduled to be completed by 2013.

When calculating the capacity of a power plant, 1 megawatt can serve the needs of 1,000 customers on average if it's coal or gas fueled or 333 customers if it's wind generated.

Ronald Lehr, an attorney with the American Wind Energy Association, said the transmission would boost future wind projects in Colorado, especially in the north and northeast.

Proponents of solar, wind and biomass energy have long argued that constraints in transmission lines could slow the growth of renewable energy projects.

The Pawnee and Smoky Hill substations today are connected by two 230-kilovolt transmission lines that cannot handle the 1,400 megawatts of power generation supposed to go through them at peak times.

Xcel will spend $3.5 million this year to upgrade those lines and the two substations.

Utilities say investors often are hesitant to commit millions of dollars to build new transmission lines, given that the money can be recovered from ratepayers only years later. Last year, Colorado legislators approved Senate Bill 100, which allows utilities to recover the money during the construction of transmission lines - thereby assuring investors that they can see returns on their money much sooner.

"The rules are being rewritten for renewable energy, for the environment and for global warming," Stan Lewandowski said.

chakrabartyg@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2976

Comments

  • March 12, 2008

    9:14 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    1104 writes:

    Lewandowski needs to wake up and admit that climate change is real and that we need to further the push toward renewable energy. This is the same guy that took ratepayer's money and used it to publish bogus information from the climate change skeptics and send it out in the IREA monthly bills.

  • March 12, 2008

    10:59 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    DeltaDude writes:

    At this point, REA's should be outlawed. They don't believe global warming is real or if it is real that it is harmful. They use primarily old technology coal to generate their electrical energy. In their communities, they don't practice combined heat and power principals which would boost energy usage (coal) efficiency from their current miserable 33% to something around 90 plus percent.

    http://www.intermountainchp.org/defau...

  • March 12, 2008

    12:03 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    tmk50 writes:

    So because someone or some organization does not share your belief on a subject they should be outlawed????? The R in REA stands for rural, and I would venture to guess that the current economics would not support combined heat and power pricipals in every rural town. Larger towns/cities yes, but I doubt it would make sense in a place like Stratton, Byers, Deer Trail, or any other small town on the eastern plains.

  • March 12, 2008

    12:10 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    pwern writes:

    Could someone please explain why a megawatt will service 1,000 homes if produced by a coal-fired plant, but only 333 homes if it's wind generated? That makes absolutely no sense - it's like saying a gallon of water will satisfy differing needs depending on which faucet you draw it from.

  • March 12, 2008

    12:57 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    dbsturgeon writes:

    Megawatt is a measure of total capacity at any given time. A 1 MW coal plant can burn consistently, 24/7/365 if need be. A 1 MW wind turbine will reach its maximum capacity only about 1/3 of the time (i.e. when the wind is blowing at a constant speed), thus 333 homes instead of 1000.

  • March 12, 2008

    8:40 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    DeltaDude writes:

    To tmk50, did I also mention that REA's are pretty much totally unregulated. They often times set up side private for-profit businesses and use rate payer dollars to support those private businesses.

    As for your combined heat and power statement and as an example, the big push on the western slope is electric powered heat pumps. These systems do little but transfer energy use from natural gas and propane to inefficient old technology coal based generation on a nearly one-to-one energy unit basis.

    I think you will find that the National Energy Labs would much prefer gas powered heat pumps be used. Various models can not only heat and cool but generate electricity, all at very high efficiency. These system could be used by anyone even small rural customers. It's also called "Distributed Generation" as opposed to "Centralized Generation".

  • March 12, 2008

    9:50 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    TJ writes:

    Actually, the numbers on "homes per MW" aren't quite that skewed. Wind in Colorado averages a "capacity factor" of around 40%, while the average legacy coal plant will run 80% to 90% of the time. That means that 1 MW of wind in Colorado can power just under 1/2, not 1/3, the number of homes that a coal plant or gas plant could.

    Another thing to note is that due to the high price of natural gas, gas plants are not run all the time, but typically only when consumer demand is high (like at 3pm in July, for example,) so even though a gas plant could run 90% of the time, most don't - 30% to 40% is typical in most parts of the country - i.e. the same as wind!

  • March 13, 2008

    6:34 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    VVVV writes:

    Availability is different than reliability. Availability of a gas plant may be 95%, meaning it can run at any time 95% of the year. A wind plant has an availability of 30-40%, which means it can't run 60-70% of the year. Whether they choose to dispatch it or not makes no difference, since they at least have that option. Electrical reliability depends on the option, which is where wind power can't compete. It must be accomodated, which also costs a lot more money.

    Even downtown Denver doesn't use combined heat and power. The steam leaking out you see from the manholes comes from a boiler that doesn't produce electricity with that steam. It's worse than if every building had its own boiler, since line losses account for much of the waste.

    Distributed generation is less efficient, giving off higher emissions to save a little on line losses. There is an advantage to size when it comes to efficiency.

    The worst part of this is that the least available energy, wind, is only viable in the most rural parts of the state. So the rate payers get hit with the double whammy of high generation costs from inefficient wind, and high transmission costs from the rules being rewritten for the environmental political agenda.

    Of course with all of the forests dying, biomass generation would be a great renewable energy source killing two birds with one stone. But just like nuclear power, biomass doesn't enjoy the fanatical support of the enviroidiots who know nothing about power generation or scientific reality, so we'll end up paying three times as much to stroke their ever growing egos.

    I'm pretty certain that a millenia in the future, historians will be able to tie the beginning of the downfall of the great american empire to the day Al Gore won the nobel prize. Once that happened, there was no hope left for logic to have any part in our energy future.

  • March 13, 2008

    9:48 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    DahmersCookbook writes:

    The technology to store wind power in cells is too costly. The 'Steam' coming out of the manholes in Denver is the Turtles gettin' chiefed.

  • March 13, 2008

    9:53 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Francesca writes:

    Deltadude: Intermountain is affiliated with Xcel. When Colorado-Ute went belly up they opted to go the investor-owned route and joined up with Xcel.

    There are 34 consumer-owned REA's in the Rocky Mountain area alone that are participating and calling for more and more renewable sources for power. The technology has a way to go, but definite positive steps are being made from what I read here: http://www.tristategt.org/NewsCenter/...

    For myself, I'd prefer to be a part of an REA co-op run by people who don't have a vested financial interest... who make the rate decisions though their own board, rather than pay my bills at the behest of stockholders looking for the largest dividends on their investment.

  • March 18, 2008

    3:32 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    nancylaplaca writes:

    Coal is NOT cheaper when ALL costs are taken into account. Global warming, water use, health effects, asthma, rising sea levels, heart attacks, acid rain, acidified oceans -- this is the "collateral" damage from coal we don't want to face.

    We can ignore these "externalities," but they will not ignore us.

    Stan Lewandowski and his band of Flat-Earthers are doing us all a grave disservice. And hurry up - the glaciers are melting and the Arctic is expected to be ice-free by 2012.