A Canadian transmission company and an Irish wind developer said Friday they are teaming up to pursue a central Montana power project that could result in at least $1 billion worth of new wind energy in the Great Falls area. If the project succeeds, it would give Montana's burgeoning wind energy industry room to grow - an expansion that to date has been limited by a lack of lines to move power out of the state.

A Canadian company is seeking wind power developers to move electricity along a pair of $3 billion transmission lines in Montana and Wyoming -- potentially spurring a major increase in renewable power exported from the Rockies to the Southwest. The two lines would move 3,000 megawatts of power from each state. That's more than three times as much wind power as Wyoming currently produces and eight times what Montana has.

A group of southern Alberta landowners has lost its fight to block a proposed power line that would run from Lethbridge into Montana. The Alberta Court of Appeal has ruled that the province's energy regulator was right when it said it didn't have the power to re-examine the location of the line's corridor, which had already been approved by the National Energy Board.

Construction of a $140 million transmission line between Great Falls and Lethbridge, Alberta, has been delayed at least five months because of appeals in the United States and Canada ...The anticipated start of construction, which was slated for March, is now sometime this fall.

Thanks largely to the booming energy industry, Montana drivers - particularly those who frequent two-lane highways - have been encountering more and more supersize truck traffic. ...John Hanson, co-owner of Whitewood Transportation in Billings, said the superloads are "kind of becoming an industry standard." Especially when shipping industrial components to places like Canada, where wages are high and conditions harsh, it makes economic sense to assemble ever-larger pieces in foreign factories and put them together on site.

In the works for three years, a high-voltage transmission line connecting Montana's electric grid to Alberta's through eastern Teton County is on the last leg of a footrace slowed by intense scrutiny from landowners in the proposed right of way and from the regulatory agencies required to vet the project. The final environmental impact statement for the Montana Alberta Tie Ltd. 230-kilovolt power line was published in the Federal Register on Oct. 3. ... The power line would make possible wind energy development totaling 600 megawatts, 300 mw in each direction, from Great Falls to Lethbridge, Alta.

Montana Alberta Tie Ltd. was granted a permit from the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board on Tuesday to construct the Canadian stretch of a 215-mile electrical transmission line between Great Falls and Lethbridge. The line is expected to spur wind farm construction in northcentral Montana. The EUB permit was the final OK needed for the Alberta portion, which makes up about 40 percent of the entire project, said Bob Curran, an EUB spokesman. Canada's National Energy Board previously approved the plan. "It means they can construct and operate the line now," Curran said.

The Alberta Utilities Commission's approval Tuesday of the proposed Montana Alberta Tie Ltd. line was the final Canadian permit needed for the 240-kV AC line, which would interconnect electricity markets and carry 300 MW north and south. The commission said the proposed line satisfied its conditions, including a process for negotiating disputes with landowners. ...Wind farm developers in Alberta and Montana have fully subscribed the line for marketing power both north and south.

A single wind farm located in a scenic setting outside this rural Canadian town was featured on a postage stamp three years ago. Today, the cumulative stamp of hundreds of turbines on the views of wide-open farmland and majestic mountains here is an increasingly sticky issue. "How many is too many?" asked Rod Zielinski, a municipal district councilman in Pincher Creek, 250 miles north of Great Falls. Last year, the district unsuccessfully tried to create a wind development-free zone in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. Now it's proposing changes to its bylaws to address "cumulative effect." ...Some residents value tax revenue and jobs more than vistas, and vice versa, Zielinski said. Weighing these equally important but sometimes competing values is the contentious issue in regulating the siting of wind plants, he said. "Be prepared for these things [turbines] to be there forever, like the bank downtown," he said.

Alberta farmers who hope to halt construction of a major power transmission line proposed between Great Falls and Lethbridge were granted permission Thursday to appeal the $150 million project to the Alberta Court of Appeals. "The only way we're ever going to stop this line is to win an appeal and get the decision overturned," said Scott Stenbeck, an attorney representing 16 farmers who live in the Lethbridge and Warner areas. Marc Clark, president of the line's developer, Montana Alberta Tie Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Toronto-based Tonbridge Power Inc., said the ruling may delay the project, but it won't stop the proposed line.

The Montana Alberta Tie-Line has been given conditional approval for the 230-kilovolt power line that will import and export electricity between Lethbridge, Alta., and Great Falls, Mont. The Alberta Energy and Utility Board said in a news release late Thursday afternoon that the Montana company must hold discussions with affected landowners along the approved route "to address the mitigation of specific impacts" on them. The board also ordered that Montana-Alberta Tie-Line must report back to them about this process by April 30. The board says it will not issue a permit for the project "until it is satisfied that MATL has satisfied this requirement." The $129 million project was approved by the National Energy Board last April and the Alberta board was the last step.

After a summer of relative quiet on a proposal to build a transmission line between Montana and Alberta, the project is again generating news as it heads toward the backstretch of its final regulatory races. Montana Alberta Tie Ltd. has sold to three wind farm developers its proposed power line's total capacity of 600 megawatts (300 mw in each direction) between Great Falls and Lethbridge, Alta., through eastern Teton County. The company, a subsidiary of Tonbridge Power of Toronto, Ont., reported on the Tonbridge Web site that it would have low costs while it yields $28.4 million in revenues the first year it is in operation.

Some grain growers in northcentral Montana and Alberta, used to government bureaucracy and bad weather eroding their bottom line, are determined to get a fair shake from another adversary - big business - in the form of a Canadian company proposing to build a private or "merchant" transmission line across their cropland. The federal and state/provincial governments on both sides of the border are set to approve or deny the permits for Montana Alberta Tie Ltd.'s three-year-old proposal by summer's end for the American portion and in October for the Canadian portion.

The U.S. Department of Energy plans its toughest environmental review of the proposed power transmission line between Great Falls and Lethbridge, Alta., after farmers complained about the proposed type and routing of the power poles.

Following complaints from farmers, the U.S. Department of Energy is now planning its toughest environmental review of a proposed $120 million power transmission line between Great Falls and Lethbridge, Alberta.... Wind farm developers have said the line is critical to construction of their projects. To date, three companies have signed up to use capacity on the line to ship power from wind farms they're planning between Great Falls and the Canadian border.

The open country north of Great Falls stretching to the Canadian border - long known for its wheat - may be about to see an explosion of a new crop. Harvested from towers twice as tall as the old Milwaukee Depot, with blades that reach nearly 400 feet into the sky, that crop is wind. The growth hinges on regulatory approval and construction of the Montana Alberta Tie, a 203-mile-long transmission line that would tie into the U.S. power grid at Great Falls and the Canadian grid in Lethbridge, Alberta.

A proposed cross-border power transmission line connecting electric systems in Alberta and Montana has cleared a major regulatory hurdle in Canada. The National Energy Board, Canada's equivalent of the U.S. Department of Energy, on Wednesday issued a permit authorizing construction and operation of the line in Alberta.

Officials from the Montana Department of Environmental Quality had allotted three hours to hear public comment on the proposed Montana Alberta Tie, Ltd. (MATL) transmission line project. Although approximately 60 people turned out for the hearing, which was held in Cut Bank on Wednesday, March 28, only about a dozen of those offered testimony on the project-the majority of which was very supportive. As proposed, the 130-mile transmission line would extend from the Montana-Alberta border northeast of Cut Bank to an existing substation just north of Rainbow Dam near Great Falls. DEQ has tentatively selected a preferred route, which contains "small revisions" in five areas to reduce impact on property owners. The proposed action by the DEQ also requires MATL to use single pole structures along 24 miles of the line.

The preferred alternative in a draft environmental impact statement on a proposed transmission line between Great Falls and Lethbridge, Alberta, recommends changes to soften its impact on landowners. When constructed, the Montana Alberta Tie Ltd. line would provide the state with 300 megawatts of electricity-transmission capacity. It is expected to spur construction of up to four wind farms in northcentral Montana, which would use the line to ship power to homes and businesses in Montana and Canada. The State Department of Environmental Quality released the study late Friday afternoon.

A Canadian company's plan to build electrical transmission lines might provide a way for Idaho National Laboratory to sell nuclear power someday, a lab spokesman says. TransCanada's NorthernLights project includes three electrical transmission lines in the Pacific Northwest by 2012, including two that would run through southeastern Idaho. The two high-voltage, direct-current lines — one from Montana, the other from Wyoming — would come together in southeastern Idaho and weave south to Las Vegas. They will carry energy from coal, wind power and other sources.