An $8 billion wind power project to supply the Los Angeles area with large amounts of electricity from a wind farm in Wyoming via an energy storage facility in Utah was proposed Tuesday by four companies.
The Wyoming and Utah sites would be linked by a $2.6 billion, 525-mile transmission line that would traverse Colorado, and the power would be sent on to California through an existing, 490-mile transmission line, the group said in a statement.
The electricity would be enough to serve 1.2 million homes, the statement said.
Pathfinder Renewable Wind Energy, Magnum Energy, Dresser-Rand and Duke-American Transmission Co. said they plan to formally submit the proposal to the Southern California Public Power Authority by early 2015.
The group said the project would require building a $4 billion, 2,100-megawatt wind farm at Chugwater, Wyoming, 40 miles north of Cheyenne, and a $1.5 billion energy storage site near Delta, Utah, 130 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
The energy would be stored through a compressed-air system using four caverns carved out of underground salt formations.
When energy demand is low, excess electricity from the wind farm would be used to compress and inject high-pressure air into the caverns, each of which would have 41 million cubic feet of volume.
At times of high energy demand, the high-pressure air would be combined with a small amount of natural gas to power eight electricity-producing generators, the statement said.