Southern California just secured a lot of power from the US’s largest clean energy transmission project

Clean Power Alliance, California’s fourth-largest electricity provider, is going to source power from SunZia, the US’s largest clean energy transmission project.

Clean Power Alliance (CPA) supplies electricity to 30 cities across Los Angeles and Ventura counties, and it’s signed a 15-year power purchase agreement with SunZia’s developer, Pattern Energy Group.

The SunZia project is made up of two arms: SunZia Wind and SunZia Transmission. It will provide CPA with 575 megawatts (MW) of wind energy, which is 16% of SunZia’s overall capacity and enough to power 265,834 homes in Southern California annually. The wind power will be carried over the SunZia Transmission line, enabling power delivery from SunZia Wind directly into the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) energy market. 

SunZia Wind is the largest wind project in the Western Hemisphere. The 3,500-MW wind farm sprawls across New Mexico’s Torrance, Lincoln, and San Miguel counties.

The $8 billion SunZia Southwest Transmission Project is a 550-mile ± 525 kV high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission line between central New Mexico and south-central Arizona. It will transport up to 4,500 MW of primarily clean energy to Arizona and California.

SunZia Transmission’s permitted route originates at a planned substation in Torrance County, New Mexico, and ends at the existing Pinal Central Substation in Pinal County, Arizona.

The US’s largest clean energy transmission project, first proposed in 2008, is expected to create over 2,000 new jobs, has an expected economic impact of $20.5 billion, and is expected to come online in 2026. It’s going to supply power to more than 3 million people.

Read more: This is what the electricity grids need now to support clean energy

Photo: Pattern Energy

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