US company Invenergy Transmission, a subsidiary of Chicago-based Invenergy, plans to increase the overall power transmission capacity of its proposed Grain Belt Express Clean Line by 1 GW, to allow the delivery of a total of 5 GW of wind power. The updated plan brings the total investment for the project to US$7bn (€6.9bn).
The 25% expansion of the project will be carried out to meet the demand from locally sourced electricity. It will notably increase by fivefold the delivery capacity to the state of Missouri, with an increase in the sizing of the line’s mid-point delivery converter station from 500 MW to 2.5 GW.
The 1,287 km high-voltage Grain Belt Line will be located in the agriculture rich center of the country, linking the states of Kansas and Indiana through Missouri and Illinois. The project’s construction start has not yet been determined.