Electrical line being installed by not-for-proft entity
When an electric power transmission line is completed along Highway 515 around the middle of 2025, a total of $35 million will have been spent on the project — $30 million for 10 miles of line going north from East Ellijay, and $5 million for the substation where it ends near Lucius Road above Cherry Log.
But who will foot the cost? Craig Heighton, the director of external affairs for the Georgia Transmission Corporation (GTC) that is handling the massive endeavor, answered the question.
“We’re a not-for-profit electrical membership owned by 38 of the 41 EMCs (electrical membership corporations) in Georgia that are also not-for-profit electric co-ops,” he began. “Therefore, our costs are spread throughout the EMC member rate base. A majority of your power bill goes toward electric generation, followed by transmission costs. Then the second-largest item consolidated in your power bill is transmission costs. When you pay your power bill, over half of it is costs. So those costs are borne by the members we serve throughout those 38 EMCs.”
GTC has other revenue streams as well, Heighton added.
“We get low-cost, long-term government loans through rural utility services, so we get those federal (sources),” he said. “That’s one avenue, or method, of how we finance our transmission projects.”
Currently, 80- to 100-foot power utility poles are being erected along the 515 corridor. Heighton said crews with Pike Electric Corporation, a construction engineering company, are putting up the poles in what is called the “Whitepath 46kV Sub-Transmission Line Project.”
The substation will help supply electricity to the fast-growing northern area of Gilmer County, where the local electricity provider, Amicalola EMC, has been experiencing outages among its customer/member base.
“Certainly this process is very needed to keep reliability up for Amicalola EMC … it’s an extremely important project for that area,” Heighton emphasized.