Transmission plan would power California

Four Western States have agreed on a plan to ease the aging energy transportation infrastructure--and help California weather any future power crises:

A plan to build a $3 billion transmission line to transport electricity to power-hungry California from other Western states is to be announced today by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The line would serve as a highway to shuttle power around California, Utah, Nevada and Wyoming, providing up to 12,000 megawatts of electricity, power for as many as 12 million homes.

California officials said the project, called the Frontier Line, would ease transmission bottlenecks that contributed to the crippling state power crisis in 2000 and 2001, which regulators now say also included widespread market rigging.

The state needs to add the equivalent of two modern power plants each year, or roughly 1,000 megawatts of new capacity, at its current rate of growth and the Frontier Line will help meet that need, said Joe Desmond, deputy secretary of energy for the state Resources Agency.