Effective and Empowered Collaborative Institutions for Multi-State Decisions on Transmission Planning and Cost Allocation

Synopsis:  Today, energy policy in the United State and in many states encourages the development of new renewable power resources over carbon based resources, with wind being the primary resource of choice.  However, generation facilities using wind as their fuel must be constructed in specific geographic locations where the wind blows with sufficient intensity to make power production commercially viable.  In most cases, these locations are far from load centers and the existing infrastructure used to move energy to load.  The challenge, therefore, becomes the construction of the transmission facilities necessary to deliver power from these remote wind resources to load.  Solving this challenge requires a clear understanding of who pays for the construction, operation, and eventual removal of the new transmission infrastructure.  The crucial element in this dynamic is the line’s route, as the line’s route affects who is impacted (both positively and negatively).

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Written as a companion article to a paper titled "The Public Interest Jurisdictionally and Extra-Jurisdictionally: Toward Effective and Empowered Collaborative Institutions for Multistate Decisions on Transmission Planning and Cost Allocation" (August 11, 2009)