Putting Transmission Infrastructure Where It Belongs
- Brooks McKinney, APR
- Oct 14
- 6 min read
Jingoli Power’s Brian Williams guides a plan to deliver innovation and low-cost electricity underground from the Midwest to the Eastern power grid.
Construction projects—and service to country—have long been a part of Brian Williams’ life. A self-described “military brat” from “lots of places,” he spent his formative years on Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio watching his father, an Air Force Master Sergeant and Vietnam veteran, manage base construction projects. His mom, a civil servant, worked for the Department of Defense and the U.S. State Department.
Williams early exposure to towns and military bases in Ohio and the Upper Midwest—towns typically with far more trees than people—also instilled in him a love of the outdoors and a deep and abiding commitment to protect the environment.
Expanding Supply, Reducing Impact
Today, as a senior project manager for the SOO Green HVDC (high-voltage, direct current) Link, a 350-mile underground transmission line, Williams is guiding the development and construction of a project that will deliver low-cost electrical energy generated by solar and wind farms in Iowa to high electricity demand population centers in Illinois.
SOO Green’s transmission infrastructure, which avoids the visual blight and environmental concerns associated with conventional transmission projects, will link the grid operations of two of the nation’s largest regional transmission organizations (RTO) — Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) in the Midwest and PJM Interconnection in the East.
Williams actually works for Jingoli Power, an investor in the project and SOO Green’s primary engineering and construction consultant. But he’s been asked to help guide the project from concept to construction, including the current siting and regulatory phases.
“SOO Green will expand the supply of high-quality, low-cost renewable energy while minimizing the environmental disruption and visual impact to landowners,” he explains. “Anyone who’s done work in transmission and distribution infrastructure knows that landowners are passionate about the potential visual impact of overhead transmission lines … and you have to respect that.”
The 2,100 Megawatt (MW) SOO Green project will transmit its electrical energy using high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines buried along existing railroad rights-of-way, an approach first used to build America’s fiber optic network, Williams adds.
Following the Science
As a kid, Williams fell in love with science, a career path that gained momentum through junior high and high school with encouragement from his parents. So it came as no surprise when he pursued a bachelor’s degree in natural resources at The Ohio State University. He completed that degree in 1993.
During his college summers, Williams (in his words) “caught the bug” for doing construction work. Working for a firm that built low-income housing and small commercial buildings, he learned to appreciate what it takes to build something from the ground up.
“You learn to understand labor from the bottom up when you’ve actually done it,” he reflects. “When you've spread dirt and shoveled for hours and hours, you gain respect for what it takes to build something.”
Catching the Energy Bug
After college, Williams solidified his interest in the construction field working for Bischoff Miller & Associates, a Columbus, Ohio-based architectural engineering firm that specialized in wastewater treatment facilities.
But it was while working as a senior environmental coordinator for the MidAmerican Energy Company in Des Moines, Iowa, that he really fell in love with the transmission and distribution (T&D) field. While working for MidAmerican, Williams also earned a Master of Science degree in occupational safety management from Columbia Southern University. He joined Jingoli Power in 2015.
Minimizing Transmission Eyesores
Today, Williams is guiding the early and detailed engineering siting and design of SOO Green, which is expected to begin construction in 2028.
According to Williams, the project has finalized franchise agreements with all Iowa municipalities through which it runs. These agreements, a significant focus of the project’s site control efforts in Iowa, grant SOO Green the right to build, operate and maintain the underground transmission line within a city’s jurisdiction.
SOO Green will be collocated along an active transportation corridor—90 percent of it follows existing railroad rights-of-way, with the rest lying within federal, state and local transportation department rights-of-way—an approach that is both innovative and risky.
“Safety is paramount,” says Williams. “We have to ensure that none of our workmen or activities are operating too close to the tracks when a train passes by.”
Offsetting Costs with Innovation
Digging the required three-feet-wide by five-feet-deep trenches to lay SOO Green’s transmission cable is a well-understood process, Williams claims, but the real enabler of the project is the availability of state-of-the-art insulated and shielded transmission cables.
“Ten to 15 years ago, we could not have buried this transmission line cost-effectively,” he says. “Advancements in XLPE (Crosslinked Polyethylene) and P-Laser insulated cables—the maximum capacity per line has grown from approximately 320 Kilovolts (kV) 10 years ago to a current capacity of about 525 kV—allow us to carry much more electrical energy per line, which largely offsets the cost of putting the lines underground.”
Running conductor cable underground not only eliminates the visual eyesore of overhead transmission lines, he adds, but also reduces the need to clear wide swaths of land, which eliminates threats to migratory birds, turtles and native plants.
Delivering on the Promise
And while safety and new transmission technology are foundational to SOO Green's execution plan, advises Williams, one of its most daunting challenges is logistics. His team is currently developing a rigorous plan to deliver materials and equipment to the worksite safely and on schedule to support the timely installation of 350 miles of underground cable.
Making that process simpler is SOO Green’s decision to contract with a single vendor, Prysmian, to design, manufacture, and install HVDC cable for the entire cable route.
“Jingoli Power has a track record of managing materials successfully for large projects, and we expect SOO Green HVDC to be no exception to that history,” Williams says proudly.
Building Transparency
He recognizes, however, that communication with the public about the scope and benefits of SOO Green is every bit as important to its success as digging trenches and installing cable.
To that end, he and his team have conducted a series of public meetings with consumers in Iowa and Illinois to explain the project.
“I think the public has difficulty understanding that there are RTOs that control the grid within a region, and that SOO Green is going to connect between two regions,” Williams suggests. “They understand the concept of connecting a power generator to the local substation, but what we’re doing will allow everyone in the region to connect, in effect, with another region.”
Breaking the Bottleneck
Energized by these public meetings, Williams is excited about what SOO Green will mean for affordable and reliable energy in general, and for current and future renewable energy sources in the Upper Midwest in particular.
“Today, many renewable energy generators in MISO territory cannot operate at full capacity because there’s insufficient transmission infrastructure to ship out their energy,” he says. “SOO Green will create a transmission tollway that will break this bottleneck, allowing buyers of renewable energy on the East Coast to purchase excess utility-scale energy generated by providers in the Midwest.”
This new underground energy pipeline will come with the added bonus of eliminating weather and storm-related outages, he stresses.
Keeping an Open Mind
Williams, a father of two college students—one is studying architecture, the other sports management—splits his professional time between a home office in Aurora, Ill.—a suburb of Chicago—and working in the field along the SOO Green project corridor. He also commutes periodically to Iowa for meetings with investors, teams involved in environmental studies, and local regulatory agencies.
Through it all, he is guided by a simple philosophy: remain open-minded. As a seasoned professional, he’s seen his share of whimsical and seemingly unachievable infrastructure projects come to reality.
“A lot of (infrastructure) projects come my way, and a lot of them can seem a bit unrealistic at first,” he observes, “but I try not to shoot anything down, just take each one piece by piece.”
Adding Reliability to the Electric Grid
As for the SOO Green HVDC Link project, Williams is optimistic about its potential to help guarantee a reliable electric grid and a resilient future for the U.S.
“SOO Green is a responsibly routed infrastructure project that will bring good union jobs, and deliver affordable, reliable electricity to market without disrupting local communities or the environment,” he emphasizes. “That’s a pretty good outcome for all parties concerned.”
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If you enjoyed this profile, you may also like my profile of Dr. James McCalley and his work developing a macrogrid to transmit renewable energy nationwide. If you'd like to suggest other people for me to profile on this blog, please send your ideas to brooks@personsofinfrastructure.com. Many thanks.
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