Clean Power Line Finally Live in California

Sunrise Powerlink will carry power from solar and wind sources to California’s southern coastal region. 

According to a report in Gigacom, the Sunrise Powerlink project totaled nearly $1.9 billion to erect giant towers and build both above ground and underground cables that now run over 110 miles from the Imperial Valley to San Diego.  The project required 28,000 flight hours from helicopters to complete nearly 75% of the towers along the way (video). The project uses both 500-kV and 230-kV lines and it will initially be able to carry up to 800 MW of electricity, with an eventual capacity of 1000 MW. 

Building new transmission lines, or upgrading existing ones, has come to be viewed as a necessity as more power plants are proposed and set to rise from remote regions where there is space to accommodate large-scale projects that could produce renewable energy more cheaply than smaller ones. For California, which has an aggressive goal of getting 33% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, many of the solar farms are materializing in the eastern part of the state, in arid deserts and on former farmland. 

Source  

Gigacom