The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state’s electricity grid, told Lower Colorado River Authority officials Thursday that construction of new electric transmission lines from the Fredericksburg area to Lampasas County can be delayed.

As part of a Competitive Renewable Energy Zones plan to transport wind-generated electricity from West Texas to more populated areas of the state, LCRA’s Transmission Services Corp. applied to build 345-kilovolt lines from Gillespie County to the proposed Newton substation near the west end of Kempner. The PUC rejected the application in April, however, as PUC commissioners said LCRA did not offer enough options and did not make plans to follow enough existing transmission rights of way.

After the PUC denied LCRA’s request to build the Gillespie to Newton lines, PUC Chairman Barry Smitherman asked ERCOT staff to re-evaluate the project to see if the Gillespie to Newton lines still are needed to help transmit windgenerated power.

ERCOT president and chief executive officer Trip Doggett wrote last week to Smitherman that not building the Gillespie to Newton lines will reduce by about 1 percent per year the amount of wind-generated power that can be transported. Altering existing 138-kV circuits owned by Oncor Electric Delivery, and other 138-kV circuits owned by LCRA, however, will ensure that electricity can be delivered without congestion, Doggett wrote.

Making improvements to existing lines will cost about $39 million, Doggett said, rather than the $136 million that constructing transmission lines from Gillespie County to Lampasas County would have cost.

Despite the savings from not building Gillespie to Newton lines now, Doggett said as electric demand grows, the project would provide greater long-term reliability compared to only making improvements in existing 138-kV lines.

“The potential savings noted in this reassessment (comparing the identified 138-kV upgrades to the Gillespie to Newton circuit) are a direct result of foregoing potential long-range system benefits for a near-term, less-expensive solution,” Doggett wrote.

Improvements to the existing lines will not need to be made “until the upgrades are actually needed,” Doggett added, because the work should be able to proceed quickly.

District 24 State Senator Troy Fraser (R-Horseshoe Bay), whose district includes Lampasas County and several other Hill Country counties, said in a statement that he supports the PUC’s re-evaluation of the Gillespie to Newton project.

“I am pleased that Chairman Barry Smitherman asked ERCOT to determine if the Gillespie to Newton project was still needed as part of the CREZ project,” Fraser said. “The decision by the Public Utility Commission last April to reject the original filing on this project was the right one. It is imperative that the state takes the time to get these decisions right.”

Although the PUC has not officially told LCRA to abandon plans for the Gillespie to Newton lines, LCRA spokesman Robert Cullick said the authority’s Transmission Services Corp. will not pursue the project further unless the PUC later orders new line construction.

“We stand ready to implement anything the PUC tells us to,” Cullick said. “We’re a nonprofit organization, so it’s not like we’re trying to [build new lines] to hit the next quarterly earnings target. We’re here to serve the public.”

With the construction of new lines in Lampasas County postponed indefinitely, Cullick said LCRA staff members are focusing on gaining PUC approval for routes to transport electricity from north of Sonora to Gillespie County. LCRA has submitted 75 possible routes for those new lines.

Although concerns about property rights and environmental effects make transmission projects controversial, Cullick said new transmission lines will be needed in the years to come to meet rapidly growing electric demand -- which the spokesman said is three and a half times higher in LCRA’s service area than it was 25 years ago.

Unlike East Texas and coastal areas in the state, the Hill Country does not generate enough power to meet its needs, Cullick said.

“The Hill Country is going to continue to rely on transmission lines,” he said, “because we import most of our power.”