"One of the reasons why a wholesale energy market in the West has not been easily justified or easy to pencil out in benefits is that you have higher costs of transmission and energy delivery due to limited infrastructure," Satyal said. If built, the project would enhance the value proposition for a wholesale energy market in the West, according to Satyal. It will also be able to move excess solar energy from Arizona and Nevada, which is home to a lot of solar rich resources, and potentially take it back up." "It will be able to harness the wind energy resources in Wyoming and in the intermountain West and bring it down to the Southwest. "This is a very valuable project that captures the resource diversity of the West," Satyal said. The project could provide multiple benefits, according to Ron Lehr, a consultant with Western Grid Group, an advocacy organization, and WRA's Satyal. The discussions are confidential, she said. There is "significant market interest in the high volume of cost-competitive, geographically diverse, clean electricity that the CCSM project can provide," Kara Choquette, PCW and TransWest director of communications and government relations, said in an email Monday. With all major permits in hand, the project is essentially shovel-ready, according to the company. 2 "to provide commercial certainty as soon as possible." TransWest plans to start building the transmission project in 2022 and bring it online in 2025. TransWest asked FERC to accept the solicitation results by Feb. PCW is building the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre (CCSM) wind farm in south-central Wyoming, which has some of the best wind resources in the United States. An open season for capacity on the transmission project ended last month with PCW as the only eligible participant in the process, according to the filing at FERC.