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Massive power line could cross region
At least eight transmission lines are planned to connect the region with Midwestern coal plants.
By David Singleton | Staff writer of Scranton Times-Tribune
A proposed major power transmission line designed to relieve existing lines along the crowded Eastern Seaboard would sweep through Northeastern Pennsylvania on its way from PPL Corp.’s Susquehanna nuclear power plant to a substation in New Jersey.
It would be built by PPL and two other utilities.
The board of managers of PJM Interconnection, which operates the Mid-Atlantic electricity grid, will be asked to endorse the $350 million project at its June 22 meeting. It was one of two major new lines a study group formed by the Valley Forge-based PJM recommended earlier this week.
A map prepared as part of the PJM presentation shows the 500-kilovolt line traveling northeast from the Susquehanna plant in Salem Township, Luzerne County. It would travel northeast, mostly parallel to Interstate 81, past Wilkes-Barre and Scranton to Clarks Summit.
From there, it would run due east toward Port Jervis, N.Y., before slicing southeast through the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area into northern New Jersey. The line would end at a substation at Roseland, near Livingston, N.J.
PPL spokesman Ryan Hill described the map as illustrative and said it depicted one possible route for the 130-mile line.
“The only thing I would focus on is the end points,” Mr. Hill said Friday. “How we get from one point to the other is still be to be determined.”
If the PJM board gives its thumbs-up, PPL and its partners, FirstEnergy Corp. of Akron, Ohio, and Public Service Enterprise Group of Newark, N.J., would begin the process of determining a route for the line to present to the state Public Utility Commission.
Mr. Hill said a host of factors will go into siting the line, including environmental impacts and engineering costs. Existing rights of way will be considered. There will be opportunity for public input.
The line is projected to go into service on June 1, 2012, according to PJM.
“Siting, designing and building a line like this could take five years or more,” Mr. Hill said.
PJM predicts some of the power lines on the grid it oversees in 13 eastern states will become overloaded as early as 2012.
The other proposed line would run about 300 miles from an American Electric Power Co. plant near St. Albans, W.Va., to a substation that would be built near Damascus, Md.
PJM has no regulatory authority, but its opinion carries weight with state utility regulators.
Both lines would fulfill needs identified by the Department of Energy as critical to the nation’s electric transmission grid. Under a 2005 law, the federal government has the power to override state regulators who balk at such projects.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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