Cable bundles as thick as pickup tires and bearing 765,000 volts would bind the ever-more-productive wind fields of Kansas to outside markets.

The project, estimated to be worth up to $800 million, is still up for grabs between two competing groups that could get the lines up and humming by 2013.

"It's crucial and it's going to happen," said Maril Hazlett, associate chairwoman of the Climate & Energy Project, which is part of the Land Institute, a Salina-based nonprofit group.

To some, however, the line would be outsized and for Kansas far more than needed in the foreseeable future.

"I'm not seeing anyone who says we need it now," said Niki Christopher, an attorney for the Citizens' Utility Ratepayer Board in Topeka.

Today, delivery of wind energy is cobbled together with various lower-voltage power lines that limit the number of new turbine farms in a state seen as the nation's third-best wind location.

Currently, most wind energy produced in Kansas is consumed in the immediate region, but as production increases, the southern and southeastern United States increasingly are viewed as the potential markets.

Nearly 1,012 megawatts from wind turbines will be available by the end of 2009, but 7,000 megawatts are proposed for western Kansas by 2030.

Kansans would not pay for all of the 765-kilovolt line, since it would help improve the grid, and utilities in other states can benefit. But how that cost is divided will be important for Kansas consumers who would pick up at least part of the bill.

"The wider you can spread it out, the more reason you have to be thrilled to death," Christopher said.

The project still has regulatory hurdles, including approval of its route and the crucial question of who will build it. The proposals being considered for a possible agreement next week are from:

•Prairie Wind LLC, a joint proposal of Westar Energy, American Electric Power and Warren Buffett's MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. Its proposed route covers about 230 miles from near Dodge City to Wichita and from Medicine Lodge south to the Oklahoma border, where another high-voltage line is planned to take it from there.

•ITC Great Plains, a subsidiary of ITC Holdings, the country's largest independent transmission company, similarly would build a 180-mile line from Dodge City to Medicine Lodge and Wichita, dipping south into Comanche County, which borders Oklahoma.

Backers of the two plans have been negotiating the matter. They now privately tell others, including regulators, that a deal has been struck that will give each a piece of the 765-kilovolt line. Details were still being threshed out this week, but an agreement could be filed any day with the Kansas Corporation Commission.

"We're getting much closer to resolving this," said Kimberly Gencur Svaty, spokeswoman for ITC Great Plains, which is unconnected to Kansas City's Great Plains Energy Inc.

Both would collect power from various smaller lines and potentially supply 2 million homes with electricity.

The line needs 150-foot-tall towers, or about 25 feet taller than for a 345-kilovolt line. From each tower will hang three power cables.

Each cable is a bundling of wires and spacers, measuring about 30 inches in diameter.

A 765-kilovolt line's three cables can carry up to six times the electricity of the three smaller cables strung on the towers of a 345-kilovolt line, the largest now used in Kansas.

As it will need a 200-foot right of way, just 50 feet wider than for a single standard 345-kilovolt line, the super line ultimately will take up less room.

Another crucial advantage is that the higher-voltage system also loses less electricity during transmission.

The cost saving of the mega-transmission lines is one reason the U.S. Department of Energy wants a web of 765-kilovolt lines around the country to upgrade the electric grid.

"They're like the fiber optics of the transmission system," said Kelly Harrison, president of Prairie Wind.

The 765-kilovolt lines, the biggest now used in the United States, were introduced by American Electric Power, based in Columbus, Ohio. The lines allowed the utility to build power plants close to West Virginia and Kentucky coal and transmit the power back to customers.

Harrison, of Prairie Wind, said he's found support among government officials in the counties affected.

"They all understand without the transmission, wind doesn't happen."