Greenlink West Transmission Route Planning
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Nevada has a goal to generate 50% of its power from clean energy by 2030. Solar and geothermal capacity in Nevada make this a feasible goal if transmission infrastructure is in place and investment in clean energy production happens quickly enough.
The several hundred miles between Las Vegas and Reno are a prime area for solar farms and the Bureau of Land Management has permitted locations on BLM land and opened them for leasing. At this time there is no way to connect those new energy sources to the grid as there are no transmission lines running from Las Vegas to Reno.
Greenlink West is a new long distance transmission line developed by NV Energy, a large Nevada utility company Running from northeast of Las Vegas to Carson City and Reno, it will have a 525 kilo-volt backbone and new 345-kV, 230-kV, and 120-kV lines to transmit and distribute electricity. Substations along the route will collect energy from new solar farms.
One of the most challenging aspects of building a new transmission line is route determination and approval. Transmission lines cross multiple jurisdications and land ownership. Route planning relies on the identification of different factors that would influence the selection of a path. This could be the steep slope of a hillside, the fragility of an archeological site or the cost of construction. Once factors are selected, they can be quantified. Being on sacred land would have an extremely high, prohibitive "cost". Being in an approved energy corridor would have a very low cost.
The maps presented here are an exercise in route planning completed for a final project in the UCLA Extension Advanced GIS course.
Note: The actual route for the Greenlink West project is still under review; an original route like the one proposed here was then examined and reviewed in detail. A draft environment review of the project was released on May 26, 2023 and included an updated route following stakeholder decisions. This route from that report is included below as a comparison.
Greenlink West is the second of three new line transmission projects developed by NV Energy.
One Nevada Line is a 525-kV service running from Las Vegas to Robinson Summit in eastern Nevada that has been completed and in service.
A third line, Greenlink North, is anticipated to connect Carson City to Robinson Summit, completing an expanded electrical grid across Nevada that can onboard new clean energy and tap into national markets.
Construction of Greenlink West will facilitate Nevada's goal to achieve 50% renewable energy by 2030.
Nevada's Clean Energy Potential
This map shows solar and geothermal energy potential in Nevada; yellow areas for solar, red for geothermal.
Notice that there are no transmission lines of any size that run through the areas of highest solar potential.
Much of this land is owned by the BLM; the yellow squares represent solar energy sites that are already permitted and ready for development once the transmission line is active.
Land Ownership
85% of all of Nevada is owned by various Federal agencies; 63% by the Bureau of Land Management.
BLM has been specifically tasked with helping develop clean energy on its lands; it's safe to assume that fewer barriers to constructing new long distance lines would be lower on BLM land.
This map also shows the West-Wide Energy Corridor, which has been designated for long-distance oil, gas and electric infrastructure. Highways are also shown.
These elements along with slope will be used in calculating the least cost route for the new line.
Calculating the Route
There a bit of chicanery and a fair amount of drudgery in setting up the calculations for calculating the best route.
Any vector data (roads, transmission lines, corridors) first needs to be converted to raster data. Raster data, unlike vector data, is numeric in nature; each little square or pixel of a raster image has a value; those values can be manipulated, converted, and added to each other.
The Combined Scoring Factors image is the end product of these machinations; once completed, route planning calculations can be run.
Greenlink West Route
Behold the calculated route! It skirts sensitive Department of Defense sites, National Monuments, and Tribal Lands.
Heading north from Las Vegas, Greenlink first follows US Highway 95 and then makes use of the West-wide Energy Corrider.
Not included in this map are new substations and feeder lines from new clean energy sites.
Greenlink West - Overview
Once completed, Greenlink West will provide a crucial link from Las Vegas to the Reno area.
Comparing Calculated and Actual Routes
The Greenlink West project is in the final stages of review (as of June 24, 2023). The route shown above was determined by calculation alone; final routing must factor in additional requirements, whether environmental, social, cultural or cost-related.
This map shows the difference between the calculated route and the latest BLM preferred route.
It is possible that the process followed by NV Energy or the BLM started in the same way that this portfolio project did; identify all the key factors at a macro level, calculate the best route using that, and then review where changes and exceptions need to be made.
The Greenlink West project is targeted primarily to meeting Nevada's clean energy goals by making it possible to 'extract' and transmit solar energy to where it is needed in the state.
The need behind this project - clean energy is located in an inconvenient place and needs to be made accessible - is a national priority. As the below map shows, with the exception of hydro, power plants have been built near to the population served. If the plant is fired by natural gas or coal, the energy source can be burned at the plant and distributed quickly to local customers.
Small plants tend to connect to transmission lines under 345-kV. Growing solar, wind and geothermal energy sources will require many many more small plants where the energy is produced at the source rather than being transmitted as gas or coal and many more transmission lines to move that electricity to where it is needed.
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