TERRE HAUTE —
By mid-September, Ameren Transmission Co. plans to reveal a proposed route, along with at least one alternative route, for a high-voltage electricity transmission line that will span 330 miles and connect near Terre Haute.
Ameren, a Missouri-based power company, concluded public open houses Tuesday on the project known as the Illinois Rivers transmission line, a 345,000-volt line that would run from Palmyra, Mo., to just west of Terre Haute. Open houses were held last week in Edgar and Clark counties in Illinois.
Ameren will conduct more open houses in September, before filing for the transmission line in November with the Illinois Commerce Commission, which is expected to issue a final order no later than July 2013, said Ameren Transmission spokesman Leigh Morris.
The project is estimated to cost $890 million to $1.4 billion, Morris said.
If approved, construction of the transmission line through Illinois to Indiana is scheduled to be completed in 2016. The project is part of MISO, a regional planning organization for the power grid in the Midwest.
The entire transmission line to the East Coast is slated to be finished and operational in late 2019, Morris said.
The line could tie into Indiana west of Terre Haute at the Sugar Creek Substation, jointly owned by Duke Energy and Northern Indiana Public Service Co., said Duke Energy spokeswoman Angeline Protogere.
“The section of this [Ameren] project in Indiana is only one mile,” Protogere said. After that, Duke Energy would construct a transmission line across Indiana, she said.
“Until we know exactly where it will cross the border between Illinois and Indiana, our line planning won’t begin,” Protogere said.
MISO members would share the cost to establish the transmission line, Protogere said.
In addition to approval from Illinois regulators, Ameren “is still a long way from construction. We have 330 miles of easements to secure. There will probably be something in the vicinity of 1,500 landowners, and we will have to negotiate with all of them to secure a right-of-way that is 150 feet wide,” Morris said.
The easements would exclude any construction or planting of trees, he added.
“It is a big project … and the largest single transmission project ever in the state of Illinois,” where the majority of the transmission line will traverse west to east, Morris said.
The high-voltage transmission line would be supported by single-shaft steel poles, ranging from 80 to 140 feet tall, with spans between the poles expected to be 700 to 1,000 feet, Morris said.
The need for the transmission line is a result of a study from MISO, Morris said, which determined the need for the transmission of 41 million megawatt hours of power from wind turbines in the Dakotas, Iowa and Minnesota through Illinois and Indiana. To put that into prospective, the electrical output is equal to 10 standard electric power-generating plants, Morris added.
“A typical wind turbine produces 1.5 to 2 megawatts, sometimes 2.5 megawatts of power. It takes a lot of wind turbines to come up with that much electricity,” Morris said.
Reporter Howard Greninger can be reached
at (812) 231-4204 or howard.greninger @tribstar.com.
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Electric transmission line being built to Terre Haute
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