Electricity Use Expected to Double: SPP's Board Approves Its 2025 Transmission Plan

Southwest Power Pool, SPP, plans transmission across what its release of November 5, 2025 calls a "14-state footprint." That day it announced that its board had approved projects in its 2025 Integrated Transmission Plan, which it shortens to ITP. The release sets the approval beside a forecast that demand will rise and a case for building at a higher voltage. It names no line and gives no date by which one would carry power.

What the Board Approved

The board's approval covers $8.6 billion of 2025 ITP projects, and the release says it "builds on decades of collaborative planning across SPP's 14-state footprint." The plan, in SPP's words, "identifies new and upgraded high voltage lines needed throughout the SPP footprint and which will produce the highest benefit-to-cost ratios in SPP's planning history."

It puts a range on those ratios. "For every dollar invested in transmission infrastructure through these projects, the region is projected to gain between $12 and $18 in benefits." The range is a projection, and the release calls it one. It does not show what the projection rests on.

A Higher-Voltage Backbone

Central to the portfolio, the release says, "is the development of a regional 765 kilovolt (kV) backbone," which it calls "an efficient, scalable solution for long-distance power delivery." Its case for the higher voltage is that "A single 765 kV line can carry four times the power of a 345 kV line while using less land and losing less energy over long distances."

The portfolio, SPP says, "also supports the interconnection of new generation resources which are critical to maintaining reliability as demand grows." That includes "many dispatchable resources such as natural gas units queued in SPP's generator interconnection study process."

The release calls new generation critical to reliability, and the natural gas units it mentions are queued in a study process. On its own account, then, part of the reliability case waits on plants not yet connected.

Demand Expected to Double

Electricity use across SPP's region, the release says, "is expected to double over the next decade as economic growth and new demand from homes and businesses accelerate." It adds, "Even under conservative assumptions, SPP forecasts a 35% increase in demand, making timely transmission investment essential."

The release does not use the words data center. It speaks of "new technologies" among the demands the grid faces, and of new demand "from homes and businesses." It names no line, no route and no date by which a line would be in service. For more information, it points to an "ITP Fact Sheet and ITP Report."

A board approval is a step toward lines that the release does not name or date. For a developer counting on SPP's grid, the question is which of these lines would reach a site, and when.