Green Light for Ameren Illinois $1.6B, 380-Mile Transmission Build

Ameren Illinois introduced Aug. 5 that the Illinois Commerce Fee granted a certificates of public comfort and necessity for its Central Illinois Grid Transformation Program. The approval clears the way in which for building later this 12 months on 380 miles of 345-kilovolt transmission strains, three new substations and upgrades to 5 present substations throughout 13 counties as a part of a $1.6-billion improve.

The venture stems from the Midcontinent Impartial System Operator (MISO) 2024 Lengthy-Vary Transmission Plan Tranche, which recognized important bottlenecks within the Midwest grid. 

The brand new strains can be co-located alongside present Ameren corridors throughout 13 central Illinois counties—from the Mississippi River at Quincy via the Peoria metro space to Tazewell County. 

Eight substations—three new services at Camp Level, Kenney and Piper Metropolis and 5 rebuilt or expanded stations in Brown County, Pontiac, Gibson Metropolis, Iroquois County and Peoria—can be tied into the community, with upgraded communications and supervisory management and knowledge acquisition programs to watch and management gear remotely.

“At a time when the Midwest faces a persistent scarcity of the electrical energy wanted to satisfy rising demand, this important venture will present vitality entry and certainty for companies and residential progress,” mentioned Shawn Schukar, chairman and president of Ameren Transmission Co. of Illinois, in an organization launch.

Ameren filed its joint petition in January 2024 (ICC Docket 24-0088), submitting detailed routing maps, a preliminary cost-benefit evaluation and wetland evaluation summaries. Fee workers issued 25 knowledge requests, probing right-of-way acquisition plans, load-flow modeling, environmental mitigations and coordination with third-party infrastructure homeowners. 

Map courtesy of Ameren Illinois

Public hearings in Springfield in Might 2024 drew testimony from private-landowner teams and particular person witnesses who steered alignment tweaks. Nevertheless, fee workers, together with Ameren engineers, mentioned such deviations would increase prices by 2%–4% or require new substation work, and accepted the unique alignment as “crucial to take care of reliability and assist future load progress.”

A number of commenters raised land‐use and well being issues: James Williams, whose Iroquois County farm borders a 138-kV line, urged the fee to “use present rights-of-way” quite than take new farmland. Matthew Hadsall of Peoria County warned, “My best concern as a father of seven youngsters is their well being dwelling near high-voltage energy strains,” and requested for a quarter-mile residential setback.

Ameren responded that “present environmental controls and species-protection measures meet all state and federal necessities” and that bundle deviations may improve prices or complicate substation design.

Pooled analyses have discovered that youngsters in houses with common extraordinarily low-frequency magnetic fields above 0.3–0.4 µT—ranges widespread inside about 100 m of main transmission strains—face roughly twice the chance of childhood leukemia, and the Worldwide Company for Analysis on Most cancers classifies these fields as probably carcinogenic to people (Group 2B). 

Nonetheless, main well being companies preserve that routine residential exposures pose little substantiated threat: the World Well being Group experiences “no substantive well being points” at environmental discipline ranges, and the U.S. Environmental Safety Company notes that research haven’t persistently demonstrated adversarial results at typical publicity ranges.