Grain Belt developers tell lawmakers how the transmission line will benefit Kansas

by Allison Kite, Kansas Reflector
January 17, 2025

While it won’t drop off electricity to substations in Kansas, the Grain Belt Express transmission line will bring savings and improve reliability for residents, developers of the project said Thursday. 

Representatives from Invenergy, the Chicago-based company developing the Grain Belt Express, appeared before committees of the Kansas Senate and House to answer questions about the project, which is expected to carry renewable energy from southwest Kansas through Missouri and Illinois, ending at the Indiana border.

Using high-voltage direct current technology, the 5,000-megawatt line will carry as much power as three traditional power line networks, Invenergy representatives said. It can also reverse its flow to provide power in the case of emergencies. 

“This project will unleash the power of Kansas energy to address the rapidly growing need for domestic energy supply,” said Patrick Whitty, senior vice president of public affairs for transmission at Invenergy.

Justin Grady, deputy director of the utilities division for the Kansas Corporation Commission, acknowledged lawmakers might question how installing a transmission line to carry wind power from southwest Kansas to Missouri, where it will drop off substantial power, would help Kansans. 

“The reality is that it does … because in Kansas, we are not an island,” he said.

Kansas utilities are part of a regional grid that operates in 14 states called the Southwest Power Pool. When electrical generation is built or power lines go down in the region, it can affect Kansas, he said. 

Right now, Grady said, there’s wind energy in western and central Kansas causing congestion on the regional grid. Alleviating that, he said, would help improve reliability and cost for consumers.

Beyond that, Grady said, the Kansas Corporation Commission found the economic generation from constructing the Grain Belt Express would benefit Kansas. 

“What the commission found was billions of dollars of economic development activity in the state of Kansas is essentially unlocked by this project,” Grady said. 

The company and agency’s testimony comes at a time when, according to the Kansas Farm Bureau, rural residents’ attitudes about renewable energy projects are changing. Wendee Grady, the farm bureau’s assistant general counsel, said the organization had updated its policy positions from blanket support for energy projects to a “more balanced” support of projects while “protecting landowner rights.”

To build the transmission line, Invenergy needs easements on private landowners’ properties to build towers and run the line. While Whitty said it has obtained almost all of those easements voluntarily, Invenergy can also obtain them through eminent domain, a legal mechanism that allows it to obtain easements from reluctant landowners and compensate them. 

Grain Belt’s right to use eminent domain has drawn criticism from some rural landowners. In neighboring Missouri, lawmakers tried for years to strip Invenergy of the right to use eminent domain for Grain Belt.

Grady said the Farm Bureau has advocated that the Kansas Corporation Commission, which governs utilities, require a code of conduct for future transmission line developers, including requiring “truth and transparency when companies are dealing with our members or landowners in general.” 

“Those are basic standards that are sometimes not met,” she said. 

Grady said the Farm Bureau would also like to see higher compensation for landowners and efforts by transmission developers to mitigate any harm to agricultural land from construction.

“Now is the time to address these issues,” she said, “so that companies that come to Kansas to do business are going to do it right and deal with landowners in a fair and transparent way and protect ag lands.”

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.