Black Hills Corp. BKH announced that its Wyoming electric utility has successfully placed in service the initial 12-mile segment and supporting substations of its Ready Wyoming transmission expansion project near Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The company received approval for the project from the Wyoming Public Service Commission in 2022 and commenced construction in 2023.

The largest electric transmission project in Black Hills' history, Ready Wyoming demonstrates the company’s dedication to meeting the expanding energy demands of its Wyoming customers.

Key Details of BKH’s Transmission Expansion Project

The nearly 260-mile transmission project will support the current and increasing energy needs of the company’s Wyoming customers, including data centers, while reducing dependence on third-party transmission systems.

Once fully operational, Black Hills’ Wyoming electric system will be interconnected with its South Dakota electric system. This interconnection is expected to increase the electric system's resilience, provide consumers with long-term price stability, and increase access to power markets and renewable energy sources.

The company's transmission rider will be used to recover the investment for the 260-mile project, which is being constructed across several stages. By the end of 2025, the project is expected to be completely operational. When completed, it will add six new, replacement or expanded substations and interface with electricity markets to the east and west.

Importance of Investing in Infrastructure

Rising temperatures not only increase the demand for electricity but also pose a threat to electrical infrastructure due to overheating, increasing the risk of equipment failures and fires. Investments and enhancement tasks are critical to maintaining service reliability and customer satisfaction.

Black Hills expects to make $4.3 billion capital investment during 2024-2028. The investments are focused on electric generation and transmission to serve growth, including potential for supporting data center development.

Utilities’ Initiatives to Further Enhance Infrastructure

Utilities make systematic investments to upgrade transmission and distribution lines and develop new substations to provide reliable services to customers. The objective is to warrant a proper supply of electricity to millions of customers across the United States.

Along with Black Hills, other electric power companies like Dominion Energy D, FirstEnergy FE and Entergy Corporation ETR are also taking initiatives to strengthen their infrastructure.

Dominion plans to upgrade its electric infrastructure by installing smart meters and grid devices. It is also working on a strategic undergrounding project for 4,000 miles of distribution lines. It has already completed undergrounding nearly 2,000 miles of outage-prone overhead power distribution lines in Virginia. These initiatives should increase the resilience of its operations and enable it to serve the expanding customer base more efficiently. It plans to invest $43 billion in the 2025-2029 period to further strengthen its infrastructure.

D’s long-term (three to five years) earnings growth rate is 13.59%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2025 earnings per share (EPS) implies a year-over-year improvement of 22.7%.

FE’s ‘Energize365’ is a multi-year grid evolution platform, focused on enhancing customer experience while maintaining its strong affordability position with rates at or below its in-state peers. With planned investments of $26 billion between 2024 and 2028, the company will install advanced equipment and technologies that will strengthen and modernize its transmission and distribution infrastructure.

FE’s long-term earnings growth rate is 6.91%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2025 EPS implies year-over-year growth of 8.5%.

Entergy has been investing in grid hardening to make its transmission and distribution systems more resilient. ETR plans to invest $10.63 billion in transmission and distribution during 2024-2026. Also, in 2024, the company received approval for the first phase of Entergy Louisiana’s resilience and grid-hardening plan. The plan includes 2,100 projects totaling $1.9 billion of investments over five years.

ETR’s long-term earnings growth rate is 8.44%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2025 EPS implies a year-over-year increase of 7.1%.

BKH’s Stock Price Performance

In the past three months, shares of Black Hills have lost 8.2% compared with the industry’s 12.3% decline.

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BKH’s Zacks Rank

The company currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

 

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