Have Shovels, Travel West

Town councils throughout Carbon County, including the Saratoga Town Council, have been invited to a groundbreaking ceremony at the Overland Trail Ranch on June 20. The groundbreaking will be held for the TranWest Express transmission line, a project of Power Company of Wyoming.

Both Power Company of Wyoming and the Overland Trail Cattle Company are owned by The Anschutz Corporation.

According to information from the TransWest Express website, the project was originally proposed in 2005 and will connect renewable energy resources to the western power grid while adding reliability, capacity and sustainability to the grid. In total, the completed power line will extend 732 miles through Colorado, Utah and Nevada. Once completed, it will link the 3,000 megawatt Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project with energy markets outside of Wyoming. Overall, the transmission line will deliver about 20,000 gigawatt hours a year to Arizona, Nevada and Southern California, which currently don’t have access to Wyoming’s renewable energy.

The project was approved in April by the Biden administration when the U.S. Department of the Interior issued its Notice to Proceed. The approval was the final federal authorization needed to start construction.

“Achieving the BLM NTP milestone provides important certainty that is needed as we work to complete other pre-construction steps such as finalizing our EPC contractor team. We plan on commencing construction activities on the TWE Project before the end of the year,” Bill Miller, President and CEO of TransWest, said in a statement issued April 11.

One of the key issues pushing the TWE and renewable energy involve mandates focused on the reduction of greenhouse gasses. Additionally, multiple states have enacted Renewable Portfolio Standards, which dictate how much electricity sold within a state must come from renewable sources. California’s legislation sets a goal that at least 60% of the state’s energy supply must come from renewable sources by 2030 and 100% of electricity sold to customers and all state agencies come from renewable sources by Dec. 31, 2045.

Also, anticipated population growth is driving demand for more electricity as well. U.S. Census Bureau statistics cited by the TransWest project population growth almost 50% between 2000 and 2030 in Arizona, California and Nevada, with Arizona and Nevada identified as the fastest-growing states during this period. Consumption of electricity per person is also expected to grow as more personal devices and appliances demand more electricity to operate. TransWest also cites growth in the all-electric vehicle market as an indicator that more power will be needed in the future, with demand expected to increase 2% each year in the western US.

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