Their Own Private Power Line

Given FERC approval, Outland would open its line up to some other wind projects—specifically, projects like its own where local landowners share in ownership and revenues, also known as CBED, or community-based energy developments. The company wants to extend that CBED model to its transmission line as well, not only paying a lease to landowners where the line passes through, but offering them a chance to invest in the line and share in Outland’s energy-generation profits.

Bjorklund says the project is in the early planning stages and exactly how the investments would be structured and exactly where the line would be routed are yet to be determined: “We’ve retained an engineering firm [Pinnacle Engineering] that is working on that at this very moment.” Outland will file for a route permit this spring. Bjorklund says getting it will take about a year: “Then we have to secure easements, then it’s about a two-year construction phase. The goal is to have it operational by 2012.

“But then,” she adds, “we still have the interconnection issue in the Twin Cities.” Eventually, all routes lead to MISO, which would still require Outland to queue up for permission to connect to the grid in Shakopee, though the queue there is shorter than out in western Minnesota.

“The MISO queue system is less ‘broke’ outside the Buffalo Ridge, but still quite ‘broke,’” Bjorklund says, adding that the good news is MISO knows it needs to fix it. “MISO is trying to change its queue process. No one knows what that’s going to result in.” If private financing of transmission is the innovation, interconnection delays are still the risk.