Transmission Upgrade Projects Begin in Ness County

January 19, 2026

The first of several Midwest Energy transmission line projects partially funded by a major federal grant broke ground Jan. 5 in Ness County.

Contract crews from Ward Electric of Longmont, Colo., began removing old structures and conductors on a 25-mile stretch of 115-kilovolt transmission line, which runs through parts of Ness and Rush Counties.

The Ness to Nekoma line is scheduled for completion by May 2026, weather permitting. The next transmission line project to start will be a 27-mile stretch of line between Colby and Atwood, scheduled to begin in fall 2026.

Transmission line construction outages must be scheduled far in advance with the Southwest Power Pool, which operates the transmission network in a 14-state region, to ensure reliability of the transmission system during construction.

"Because of the high demand for electricity in the summer, non-emergency line construction work has to happen outside of the summer months," said Nathan McNeil, Midwest Energy's Vice President of Engineering.

The grant, from the Department of Energy's (DOE) Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnership Program (GRIP), applies to $145 million in transmission line and substation protection upgrades, with $48 million in funding from Midwest Energy customers and $97 million in grant funding from DOE. Midwest Energy will replace 150 miles of 115-kilovolt transmission lines across seven western Kansas counties (Rush, Ness, Ellis, Graham, Sheridan, Thomas and Rawlins), where the existing lines have been in service for more than 50 years.

Replacing these lines with new poles and conductor will improve the reliability and resiliency of Midwest Energy's transmission system, while mitigating wildfire risk and increasing capacity to allow them to carry more power, which reduces congestion and supports further expansion of generation resources.

Midwest Energy was announced as a GRIP grant recipient in October 2023, and the co-op spent more than a year refining details with the DOE. Engineering work and procurement for multiple projects began in June 2024, with physical work on the first substation protection project completed in November 2025.

The grant to Midwest Energy is part of $10.5 billion being made available through DOE under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021, to improve the resilience of the power system.