Another high-voltage line?

Close on the heels of TANC’s power-line project comes another one, this time from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. The investor-owned utility has announced plans to construct a “bold and visionary project” that will transport up to 3,000 megawatts of power from new renewable resources in British Columbia to the Pacific Northwest and Northern California, over a 1,000-mile transmission line.

The project, the utility states, will provide access to renewable energy in Canada and the Pacific Northwest, improve regional transmission reliability and provide other market participants with beneficial opportunities to use the facilities.

The project will include a new line from a yet-to-be built substation in northeast Oregon to Collinsville, north of Pittsburg on Suisun Bay, with a possible tie-in to PG&E’s substation in Cottonwood. In other words, it will run down the Sacramento Valley, though exactly where is not known.

Construction, pegged at $3 billion to $7 billion, is expected to begin in early 2012 and last until late 2015.