Major Southwest Transmission Project Advances with Groundbreaking of Project

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
September 2, 2023

The SunZia Transmission Project, which will carry up to 4,500 megawatts of primarily renewable energy from New Mexico to markets in Arizona and California, advanced on Sept. 1 with a groundbreaking ceremony that was attended by several Biden Administration officials.

The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management approved the project in May 2023 and completed the review period for this project  in less than two years.

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and Senior Advisor to the President John Podesta joined federal, state and community leaders at the groundbreaking ceremony.

The SunZia Transmission Project is composed of two planned 500-kilovolt transmission lines located across approximately 520 miles of federal, state and private lands between central New Mexico and central Arizona.

The permitted route originates at a planned substation in Torrance County, New Mexico, and terminates at the existing Pinal Central Substation in Pinal County, Arizona. The project traverses Grant, Hidalgo, Lincoln, Luna, Sierra, Socorro, Torrance and Valencia counties in New Mexico and Cochise, Graham, Greenlee, Pima and Pinal counties in Arizona.