Xcel Energy officials gathered recently at the company's Fort Saint Vrain power plant near Platteville for a symbolic groundbreaking of its first75-mile segment of the company’s $1.7 billion Power Pathway project.
Eventually, the project comprised of 550-miles of high-voltage electric transmission lines in eastern Colorado will provide strength and reliability to Colorado’s energy grid, according to Robert Kenney, president and CEO of Xcel Energy Colorado.
This segment will run from the generating station near Platteville to the Canal Crossing substation some five miles south of the company’s Pawnee Generating Station near Fort Morgan.
The generating station is the site of Colorado’s first and only nuclear power plant. The plant was a helium-cooled, graphite moderated, high temperature, gas-cooled, uranium-thorium reactor. First producing power in 1974, recurring problems caused the then-Public Service Company of Colorado to decommission and change the plant over to natural gas in 1990.
“This is a critical transmission superhighway across the eastern plains of the state that will bring more than 5,000 additional megawatts of clean energy onto the grid,” Kenney said. “And you've heard about all of the clean energy that this will unlock and the project will transform our electric grid by unlocking that renewable energy right here in Weld County.”
Xcel's Vice President of Transmission Sandra Johnson called the project a “thing of beauty” and dubbed the nation’s electrical grid “the biggest machine that we have in the world.”
“I just hope everyone really appreciates transmission,” said Johnson. “I mean people may see those towers out there and they may not see them as I see them — as beautiful — but for what they do, for what they bring us.”
Xcel has nearly 5,000 miles of overhead transmission lines in Colorado, Johnson said. By comparison, there are 642,000 miles of high voltage transmission lines in the U.S. and about 6.3 million miles of local distribution lines according to the National Electrical Manufacturers Association.
“The purpose of this project, it's twofold. It's really to improve the reliability for the electric system in the state and to also enable development of renewable energy to meet our growing electric needs,” said Heather Brickey, project director for the Power Pathway Project. “It's a big loop around the eastern part of the state that allows for power to flow in multiple directions. …So, it's a key part of our electric reliability also does allow for development of renewables around the state. It diversifies where energy is generated and put into the system.”
Zane Brink, Quanta Services regional president, said that local suppliers have been indispensable in providing things like aggregate and concrete for tower bases. Getting concrete trucks from batch plants to worksites before the material sets up in the truck is a scheduling challenge, he said, but that close scheduling and coordination have so far resulted in success.
Last June, Xcel held a similar groundbreaking ceremony for the Canal Crossing substation, located about five miles south of Pawnee Generating Station, and plenty of progress was seen at the site during a visit July 11.
“Our pathway project is the largest ever infrastructure project in Colorado," Kennedy said, "and it's truly a win-win situation, increasing reliability, helping to ensure that we have power during severe weather and helping to lift-up this community with the new tax revenue over both the short term and the long term.”
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