FERC Chairman Pat Wood last Wednesday said that the recent decision by various utilities to halt work on the proposed TransLink Transmission Co. is a “horrible outcome,” adding that he hopes that activities related to forming a transmission entity in the Mid-Continent Area Power Pool (MAPP) region can be revived.

“We want them to come back together,” Wood told the “Transmission Summit 2004,” which is being sponsored by Infocast Inc. and is taking place over the next several days in Washington, DC. “It’s on my top 10 prayer list,” the FERC chairman added.

Work on TransLink was suspended in November. Plans had called for TransLink to operate and own electric transmission systems in portions of Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin.

“That MAPP region is an important part of the country,” Wood told attendees of the conference. “It’s important to get those folks all under one grid operator, one air traffic controller, from a reliability point of view.” Wood said that TransLink had a “very good business model,” as well as a “very attractive rate design.”

TransLink participants included: Interstate Power and Light Co., a subsidiary of Alliant Energy; Central Iowa Power Cooperative; Corn Belt Power Cooperative; Dairyland Power Cooperative; Great River Energy; MidAmerican Energy Co.; Muscatine Power and Water; Nebraska Public Power District; Omaha Public Power District; Rochester Public Utilities; Southern Minnesota Municipal Power Agency; Xcel Energy; and Midwest Municipal Transmission Group, an association of municipal utilities.

Following his appearance before the conference, Wood told Power Market Today that a revived TransLink “could be even bigger. I think there were some people in the North Dakota region — that were not included in that because of rate design issues — that I would hope could be” included.

Wood also commented on whether he thinks the view of states in the proposed TransLink region may have changed.

“From talking to the states since that time, it sounds like everybody didn’t want to say no…but they wanted some changes made to the operation that I don’t think, from what I hear what they were, are very fatal to the overall business plan.

“It’s a very salvageable project, I think, and I’m just sorry that the sponsors pulled out as quick as they did, rather than work through the details.”

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