ATC proposes new power line
Project expected to improve flow from Wisconsin to Illinois
A new power line proposed to improve the flow of power from Wisconsin into Illinois would cost $52 million to $63 million and open in 2020, American Transmission Co. says.
The project was unveiled just over two years after ATC completed a separate project in almost exactly the same area along the state line, at a cost of $36 million.
That 345,000-volt line opened in late 2013 between Pleasant Prairie in Kenosha County and the Zion Energy Center, a natural gas-fired power plant in Lake County, Ill.
That line improved power flows from We Energies’ coal plants in Pleasant Prairie and Oak Creek into Illinois, but the amount of power being shipped from Wisconsin was much higher than forecast, according to the utility.
As a result, those higher electricity flows create risk of power failures in the years to come, ATC says.
The project envisions a new substation in Illinois and a power line that would be three to five miles long. The substation in Wadsworth, Ill., would link the power plant with the transmission system of Chicago utility Commonwealth Edison Co.
Since the Pleasant Prairie-Zion Energy Center line opened, “market conditions have continued to change in Wisconsin and Illinois, leading to unanticipated congestion in the Wisconsin-Illinois electrical interface,” said Luella Dooley-Menet, an ATC spokeswoman. “This project is needed to resolve that.”
The utility is also planning for the possibility that coal plants will have to be retired in the years ahead, she said.
Coal plants are targeted to run less often or shut down as part of the Environmental Protection Agency rules — put on hold last month by the U.S. Supreme Court — known as the Clean Power Plan.
The cost of the earlier project was shared with customers across the Midwest because it was deemed to bring value to the entire region. But because this project is needed for reliability, its cost will be paid for by customers of the utilities that own ATC.
ATC’s two main owners are WEC Energy Group of Milwaukee, the parent company of We Energies and Wisconsin Public Service, and Alliant Energy Corp. of Madison, parent of Wisconsin Power and Light.
Customers of We Energies would be expected to see savings over the long term because of the ability of this line to reduce congestion, according to ATC.
Easing those bottlenecks helps customers in the same way that a road project helps commuters, because We Energies isn’t allowed to profit from its sales of electricity to out-of-state customers. Any sales like that are used to trim the amount utility customers have to pay to recoup the utility for the fuel it burns in power plants.
The congestion prevented the utility from passing $10 million in savings on to customers this year, according to the state Public Service Commission.
ATC is hosting a community meeting in Illinois on the project later this month and expects to file an application with Illinois regulators in June. An application to the Wisconsin Public Service Commission is expected this fall.
In another project near the state line, the PSC on Thursday approved ATC’s plan to build a $70 million power line and substation in southern Walworth and western Kenosha counties. The line would be built by 2019 between Lake Geneva and the Spring Valley substation near the Village of Bristol.