William S. Andrews

My focus

Transmission

For the past several years, I have served as project counsel to the 11 load-serving entities that are participants in the more than $2.0 Billion CapX 2020 Transmission Expansion Projects. I lead the negotiation among the participants of key project agreements, including the Construction Management Agreement and the Operation and Maintenance Agreement, among others. My partner Lori Green and I were selected by The American Lawyer as one of its “Dealmakers of the Year 2011” for our work on the CapX 2020 Projects.

I also represent Southern Cross Transmission LLP in connection with its HVDC 3000 MW transmission project that will stretch from the eastern boundary of ERCOT through the states of Louisiana and Mississippi. I represented the developer of one of the CREZ projects in Texas in connection with the engineering, procurement and construction of the project. In May 2007, on behalf of Trans Bay Cable, LLC, I concluded the successful negotiation of the engineering, procurement and construction contract for a 55-mile HVDC sub-marine transmission cable under the San Francisco Bay capable of transmitting 400 MW between Pittsburg, CA, and the City of San Francisco.

Generation

I represent the Prairie State Generating Company LLC in connection with the development of a new approximately 1600 MW, mine-mouth, pulverized coal-fired power plant now in service in southern Illinois. During 2010, I led a team in the $4 billion restructuring of the Prairie State Energy Campus transaction from a Target Price agreement to a fixed price turnkey contract. During 2006, I was counsel to the Indiana Municipal Power Agency, which led the team negotiating a participation agreement among the projects’ six public power participants and Peabody Energy.

Louisville Gas and Electric Company and Kentucky Utilities Company, both investor-owned utilities located in Kentucky, have engaged me to represent them in connection with the 2014 development of a new gas-fired combined cycle generating facility. During 2012 the companies engaged me in connection with the development of a new large scale gas-fired generating facility and the development and construction of several large scale air quality control projects for generating stations in the utilities’ fleet. In 2010, I negotiated the equipment procurement and turnkey EPC Contract for a new SCR pollution control facility for one of the units at Kentucky Utilities Company’s E.W. Brown Generating Station. During 2007, I successfully completed negotiating the engineering, procurement and construction contract for the new Trimble County 750 MW coal-fired generating facility, which is now in service.

In the past several years, I have also represented LG&E and Kentucky Utilities Company in connection with the engineering, procurement and construction of six other power plants located in Texas, Georgia, and Kentucky as well as participation agreements with municipalities for joint ownership of generating assets and the procurement of major engineered equipment including boilers, turbines and pollution control equipment.

Looking ahead

My work in the energy industry has convinced me that we will see two divergent trends in energy infrastructure development over the new decade—large capital intensive multi-party energy infrastructure development and wide-spread distributed power in both business and residential spheres. On one hand, economies of scale as well as political and regulatory realities increasingly favor multi-party transactions enabling businesses with common objectives to develop large-scale energy assets on a jointly-owned basis. I have found that multi-party transactions allow each participant to calibrate the size of its investment, its appetite for development and operating risk, with its appetite for control. From a project perspective, our experience shows that assembling the vast amounts of capital that large energy infrastructure requires is more easily accomplished in a tenant-in-common structure in a manner that is consistent with each participants financing abilities and without the complications of inter-creditor arrangements. On the other hand, we are likely to see the entry of load-serving entities into the service business of rooftop commercial and residential distributed power (particularly solar) development. Harnessing the power to be generated by large-scale rooftop installations will provide economically priced power to the residential and commercial hosts, excess energy to load-serving entities, an increase in renewable resources and a beneficial reduction in the need for more expensive central plant development.