Lines across eastern Colorado

Tri-State G&T’s 112 miles of new transmission along the Kansas border has gone live. To what good purpose?

\In late February, Tri-State Generation and Transmission began sending electricity across a 230-kilovolt transmission line between Burlington and Lamar, along Colorado’s windy eastern tier.

What does this do for Tri-State as it prepares to further pivot away from coal?

The short-term consequence is that it improves reliability and reduces congestion on the transmission lines, particularly for its member electrical cooperatives from Fort Morgan to Pueblo West and southeast to Colorado’s southeastern corner.

Longer term, this and new transmission lines in Eastern Colorado will provide for additional generation interconnections of up to 700 megawatts of new resources, says Tri-State.

“We cannot specifically say what this new generation will be, as we are FERC regulated and are subject to open access transmission requirements,” said Tri-State representative Mark Stutz in response to a query from Big Pivots. “Some projects under our current or future resource planning process may be served by this new transmission line in the future.”

For much of its length, the line parallels Xcel Energy’s Colorado Power Pathway.

Some transmission lines have long histories, and this one is included. Tri-State first proposed it in the early 2000s, examined it again in 2016 and in 2020 began the work to make it happen. That included sorting through 15 different proposals with stakeholders in 2021. The line crosses 100 parcels of line, requiring more than 700 signatures for access, options to acquire right-of-way, compensation and other such legal work.

Tri-State has more transmission lines planned:

31-mile 230-kV line in the Arkansas River Valley from near Boone to a new switching station south of Pueblo that is to go into service in 2026.
Routing activities are underway for a 72-mile 230-kV line between a substation near Limon to a new switching station south of Fort Morgan, to be completed in 2028.

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