High-voltage power line would link Madison, La Crosse

Posted on | July 26, 2010 |

Thomas Content blogged at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

American Transmission Co. announced Monday that it will seek to build a 345,000-volt power line linking Madison and La Crosse, with the cost of the project tentatively pegged at $425 million.

The Pewaukee-based power company says two years of study have shown that a 150-mile line would boost electric system reliability, savings for utilities buying power in the Midwest wholesale power market and improve access to wind power generated west of Wisconsin.

No route has yet been selected and the company will spend the next two years exploring routing alternatives in the corridor shown above. A detailed cost estimate will be available once potential routes for the line are selected, said ATC spokeswoman Anne Spaltholz.

The company will host open houses with the public and stakeholders beginning this fall to explore routing choices, she said.

The line, which has been given the name Badger Coulee Transmission Line, is expected to offset the need for about $140 million in lower-voltage upgrades in western Wisconsin communities, ATC said, citing its own studies.

ATC is a transmission-line company that is owned primarily by the local electric utilities in eastern Wisconsin.

Details about the location and cost of the line will be announced when ATC submits a formal application for the line to the state Public Service Commission in 2013. At that time, the company will submit detailed routing information about two alternatives for the commission to consider.

If approved, the line would be built by 2018.

The 345,000-volt line would be a tie-in linking up the new 345,000-volt line that is under construction around Madison, and a line proposed by Xcel Energy and other utilities that is projected to cross Minnesota and connect to Wisconsin near La Crosse.

“There are multiple benefit indicators that make the Badger Coulee Transmission Line Project a plus for Wisconsin residents and the Midwest,” says John Procario, ATC chairman and chief executive said in a statement. “It’s an exciting new project because it demonstrates multiple benefits. Badger Coulee enhances electric system reliability; it provides direct energy cost savings to electricity users, and it supports the public’s desire for the greater use of renewable energy resources.”

I’ll have more about the project on JSOnline and in Tuesday’s Journal Sentinel.

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