Wyoming and North Dakota have cows, coal and open country in common.

And as of August, North Dakota has a copycat agency like Wyoming's to get transmission lines built to carry new coal and wind energy.

Wyoming's a year ahead of the game. It already has ambitions to construct lines to carry thousands of megawatts of Wyoming coal and wind power to Denver, Salt Lake City and eventually California.

The Wyoming Infrastructure Authority was created in 2004 and quickly evolved into an agency with a $6 million budget, executive director and staff and a working board of prestigious power industry representatives appointed by the governor.

In North Dakota, the State Industrial Commission asked the 2005 Legislature to make it the Transmission Authority.

In both states, the mission is to ensure that getting power on the line and out to market is not an obstacle to energy development.

What both states also have in common besides cows and coal is a transmission system that's getting old and in Wyoming "pretty thin," said the authority's executive director Steve Waddington.

Transmission lines and power plants have a chicken-and-egg relationship. Which comes first is debatable, but there can't be one without the other.

Waddington said there's the potential for 8,000 megawatts of new power generation in Wyoming to serve growing markets in Colorado, Utah and California.

That's more power than is generated by every plant combined in North Dakota today, but the plants won't be built if the power can't be delivered.

"The markets are there for somebody," Waddington said.

Basin Electric Power Cooperative, a North Dakota based power provider, was Wyoming Infrastructure Authority's first customer.

The authority helped broker a deal to finance $34 million toward a $50 million transmission line Basin will build in northeastern Wyoming to carry power from a 350-megawatt plant it plans to build outside Gillette, Wyo.

Basin spokesman Floyd Robb said the Wyoming authority helped secure attractive financing at 4.9 percent interest, allowing the co-op to do the deal at less expense to its members.

"Our ability to serve the load required a line," Robb said. "It's a question of which comes first, the line or the plant?"

He said a North Dakota Transmission Authority could play a role in the cooperative's plans to join a coalition of energy partners and build a 650-megawatt plant somewhere in North Dakota, South Dakota or Iowa.

A transmission study for that project is under way now, he said.

Karlene Fine, executive director of the Industrial Commission, said the Transmission Authority's work would go hand-in-glove with its Lignite Vision 21 program.

Lignite Vision provides loans to help develop power plants and two power plants - one in Gascoyne and one near South Heart - are in the proposal stage.

She said the commission could use its transmission authority to help both plants overcome transmission problems by issuing bonds, and creating ownership partnerships.

She said the new law makes North Dakota the "builder of last resort" and that transmission projects would be subject to public hearings and comment.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@;westriv.com.)