North Plains Connector Advances With Bipartisan Backing — and a Long Road Ahead

A proposed 420-mile high-voltage direct-current line from Montana to North Dakota has become one of the United States’ most closely watched grid projects. The North Plains Connector, valued at $6 billion, earned support from both the Biden and Trump administrations and secured a $700 million Department of Energy grant to cover startup costs — backing that helped pull several power companies into the consortium.

If completed as planned — no earlier than 2032 — the 3-gigawatt line would enable electricity to flow across three time zones, linking the Western interconnection, the Great Plains, and the Upper Midwest. Utilities from Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington have joined specifically to access reserve capacity and shield customers during extreme weather. The project also contrasts with Grain Belt Express, a rival US transmission initiative that recently lost a $4.9 billion federal loan.

“If you connect two grids whose peaks occur at different times, you create the opportunity for those grids to lean on each other,” said Michael Skelly, CEO of Grid United, the company developing the line.

Substantial obstacles remain. Developers must still negotiate land agreements with private owners and clear state and local permit reviews, with final sign-off from two states representing the largest barrier. Skelly’s earlier venture, Clean Line, closed in 2019 without finishing five lines that had a combined planned capacity of 16.5 gigawatts — a sobering precedent for a project that still has years of approvals ahead.

Source: Canary Media