Wyoming Infrastructure Authority

Though it is no longer actively pursuing interest in a $3 billion high-voltage, direct-current transmission line moving wind power west from Montana, TransCanada Corp. wants the industry to know it is still open to the idea.

TransCanada’s power transmission director, John Dunn, said Sept. 17 that the company has failed to garner enough interest in the 1,000-mile line, known as Chinook, during an open season. But the company will wait to see whether “commercial support materializes” until Dec. 16, he said, when it will officially end the project’s open season. “We did not receive and we have not received sufficient interest at this point to proceed with the project,” Dunn said. “That could change, but we don’t perceive that it will change because the phones aren’t ringing off the hook.”

Dunn has said TransCanada is now focusing its efforts on developing and permitting another $3 billion HVDC line, called Zephyr, which would carry 3,000 MW of wind-generated power from southeastern Wyoming to a southern point past Las Vegas. The 500-kV Chinook project was planned to move another 3,000 MW of wind power run from a station near Harlowton, Mont., to that same termination point.
Dunn said the company will not pursue permitting on the Chinook line. “When you start to permit a project,” he said, “that’s when really substantial dollars are required.”

Dunn described the Chinook line as one of several transmission lines proposed within the Western Interconnection that have failed to garner enough commercial support to take off. “There’s a slew of them that have had multiple open seasons, and they have not been successful,” he said. “That does not mean the projects are dead. That just means there isn’t sufficient market support for projects to proceed now.”