Plains & Eastern Clean Line was a proposed 720-mile (1,160 km), 4,000 MW long-distance HVDC transmission line to bring wind power in Oklahoma to consumers in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic United States via the existing Tennessee Valley Authority grid. It would have termini at Guymon, Oklahoma and northeast of Memphis, Tennessee and an intermediate converter station in Pope County, Arkansas. The U.S. Department of Energy is a partner in the development, its first exercise of section 1222 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, under which Congress authorized the department to promote electric transmission for clean energy. The project has been credited with bringing renewable energy to part of the country that previously had not had access.
The HVDC line to be built by a division of General Electric has been called the beginning of a North American super grid.
In late December 2017, Clean Line announced the sale of the Oklahoma portion of the Plains and Eastern to NextEra. The sale consisted of a transfer of right-of-way easements to NextEra. The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy assailed TVA for killing the project.
References
- ^ Fialka, John (November 2, 2016), "Huge Transmission Line Will Send Oklahoma Wind Power to Tennessee: High-voltage, direct-current lines could become the backbone of a U.S. supergrid", Scientific American
- "Electricity now flows across continents, courtesy of direct current", The Economist, January 14, 2017
- ^ Maps and location, Clean Line Energy Partners, March 2016
- Plains & Eastern Clean Line Transmission Line, United States Department of Energy Office of Electricity Delivery & Energy Reliability, March 25, 2016, retrieved 2017-02-10
- "Clean Line". official website. Center for Rural Affairs. Retrieved 2017-02-24.
- "Environmentalists blast TVA for killing major wind project". timesfreepress.com. 31 December 2017.