NEWS RELEASE
Jan 26, 2015 (SeeNews) – The US Department of the Interior (DOI) has approved the USD-2-billion (EUR 1.78bn) SunZia Southwest Transmission Project, which will enable the addition of 3 GW of renewable energy capacity to the desert Southwest.
The green light has been given following an extensive public process started in 2009, according to a press release published on Friday. The interior department stressed that the project still needs to receive state and local permits along with rights-of-way from private and state landowners before building works can commence.
SunZia is expected to unlock access to wind and solar resources that cannot access the Western grid at this point. The project envisages installing two parallel 500-kV transmission lines plus ancillary facilities on lands between the planned SunZia East Substation in Lincoln County, New Mexico, and the existing Pinal Central Substation in Pinal County, Arizona.
This transmission system plan is the first out of six priority projects of the Obama Administration’s Rapid Response Team for Transmission to be approved in its entirety in the West by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
The addition of 3 GW of renewable energy capacity will bring enough electricity for more than one million homes, according to the statement.
