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The 30,000-acre Frying Pan Ranch in Bushland is home to some of the first barbed-wire fences in America, as well as the building where four men voted to hold the first election in Potter County. Soon, it may also house a new 7-mile section of extra-high-voltage transmission lines.
The Potter-Crossroads-Phantom 765-kV Transmission Line Project–proposed by the Southwestern Public Service Company (SPS), a subsidiary of Xcel Energy — will extend from Amarillo to south of Portales, New Mexico, and continue to the southern part of Lea County in southeastern New Mexico. The project will install a total projected 361 miles of new transmission lines across privately owned land as well as land managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the New Mexico State Land Office (NMSL).
New transmission lines and two new substations are intended to support the increased power needs in the Texas and New Mexico SPS service areas. According to Xcel, the area has seen an unprecedented increase in power demand due to new manufacturing and growth in the oil and gas industry.
“The new transmission line will not only make the electric grid more reliable but also support the
growing economy in the SPS service territory. The Project ensures that SPS can meet customers’ energy needs and contribute to the economic development of the region,” Xcel said in a letter to affected landowners dated Oct. 6, 2025.
In Potter County, the energy company plans to construct several miles of 765 kilovolt (kV) powerlines spanning Amarillo to southeastern New Mexico and three new 345 kV transmission lines from the current Potter Substation to the proposed Tecovas Substation that would be built near the Randall County and Deaf Smith County border.
“What makes me excited is this is the first [765 kV line] in Southwest Power Pool’s footprint. So this is really the beginning of the backbone of the 765 transmission grid for big parts of the country,” Cory Wood, Xcel’s Regional Vice President of Operations, said.
765 kV lines are the highest energy lines used in North America, according to American Electric Power, which invented the 765 kV transmission line.
“When we get to a higher voltage like 765 kV, you can: one, put a lot more energy on those wires and two, because of their higher voltage, you have less [energy] losses. So it’s a more cost-effective energy transfer of moving energy long distances,” Jared Cooley, Xcel Strategic Planning Director, said.
According to Wood, the extra-high-voltage lines allow Xcel to meet the growing demand with one project instead of several smaller voltage projects, ideally reducing the company’s overall impact on the land.
The project will require approvals from both the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission. The project will also cross land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, which requires SPS to submit a right-of-way application for authorization to construct and operate the Project on the federally-managed land.
Once the final route is approved by the relevant authorities, Xcel and SPP will negotiate with landowners to secure an easement across their property. Xcel projects that land acquisition will begin in the third quarter of 2026 and last until the first quarter of 2029.
According to Timothy Ingalls, the manager and co-owner of Frying Pan Ranch, the project could condemn a total of 380 acres of the ranch’s land.
“We used to have easements that were like a little wood pole, and it kind of blended in with the landscape. This is bigger than any easement, probably in this whole region, and then of course they can condemn your land,” Ingalls said.
Condemnation is the legal procedure that a government can use to exercise its power of eminent domain or the ability to seize private property for public use. In Texas, if a portion of a tract of land is condemned, then a board of special commissioners is empaneled. The board is composed of three landowners, who have no interest in the property being condemned and no connection to any parties involved in the condemnation, appointed by a judge in the court where the condemnation suit is filed.
The commissioners will determine the damage to the property owner based on the extent of the injury and benefit that the condemnation will cause to the land, as well as the effect the condemnation will have on the value of the landowner’s remaining property.
According to Xcel, the company reaches a consensus on mutually agreeable compensation for all parties involved in an easement acquisition in the majority of cases, and it uses eminent domain as a last resort.
The Frying Pan Ranch has been in Ingalls’ family since it was established in 1881 by his great-grandfather, William Henry Bush, a rancher and businessman, as well as the namesake of the city of Bushland. Bush managed the ranch on behalf of his father-in-law Joseph F. Glidden, the inventor of modern barbed wire.
“[The ranch has] always been a source of rest and rejuvenation, you could say, ever since I was little. I’d always go out hiking with friends or with my mom. It’s kind of a way to connect with nature and just a less mechanistic society kind of thing, a more natural world,” Ingalls said.
Ingalls and his siblings were raised on the ranch. He moved away from the area for college and eventually returned in 2012 to manage the ranch.
“One of the main reasons I got inspired to move home was because of the promises of regenerative agriculture, basically the idea that we could improve the ecology of the land, and also improve the carrying capacity,” Ingalls said.
On Frying Pan Ranch, livestock is rotationally grazed through several different pastures regularly. The ranch uses hot wire or electric fences to subdivide their land and move the cattle around so as not over-graze any one section of the land. With the construction of the power lines, the ranch will no longer be able to run hot wire underneath the power lines, as the lines interfere with the wire, according to Ingalls.
“The hot wire can’t really go underneath the lines,” Ingalls said. “It doesn’t work underneath them. So that would affect our ability in those pastures. Once they have the easement, you have random people on the land from time to time. There’s certain rights to it, and in general, it further industrializes your land for the cattle.”
Ingalls is also concerned about the herbicides that they anticipate would need to be sprayed around the new electrical structures, interfering with the ranch’s organic production methods.
“We look at a lot of impact on a project like this, everything from the environmental, biological, environmental, archeological to we’ve got guidance from the Public Utility Commission that we look at proximity to habitable structures, schools, parks, communication towers, airports,” Sean Frederiksen, Xcel’s senior manager of siting and land rights, said. “So there’s a lot of things that we look at that we evaluate and use as information to put together the most probable opportunity to develop a route from.”
According to a pamphlet on easement acquisition published by Xcel, the right-of-way agents and construction crews will work with landowners to minimize impacts to livestock, and the company uses market data to determine appropriate compensation for an easement.
Xcel typically gives landowners a one-time payment for easements, according to its customer service page. Ingalls believes that a one-time payment isn’t fair compensation.
“The other thing I think is really unfair about these easements is that they always want to buy them as like a one-time payment. Like ‘We’ll give you $200,000 per mile’ or whatever for it. But then my kids, anyone in perpetuity, has to live with it,” Ingalls said.
Instead, in Ingalls’ opinion, a fairer option would be annual compensation.
In Texas, utility easements aren’t typically paid for on an annual basis, as they are usually permanent and perpetual, meaning that they stay with the property forever, even across new owners.
Ingalls is also concerned about the name of the proposed substation in Randall County. The Tecovas Substation shares a name with the Tecovas Foundation, a non-profit organization incorporated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and run by Ingalls and his mother.
“We’ve just been sort of throwing different names at them,” Ingalls said. “But I’m not completely sure how to get that changed. …They’re going to run it right by the creek, and I just felt like that was like a one-two punch,” Ingalls said.
Public outreach for the project is expected to last until the third quarter of 2028, according to Xcel. The company has held nine public meetings for landowners that may be affected by the project.
“We’re working through a lot of comments that we received back from the landowners, taking those comments and looking at making alterations or tweaks to the routes that we proposed, and continuing to coordinate with those landowners as we resolve their concerns and get into fine-tuning the final routing,” Frederiksen said.
Reporter Maegan Story contributed research and initial interviews to this story. Phoebe Terry contributed additional interviews.
The Amarillo Tribune includes written disclosures in all of our stories that feature a donor who has given more than $1,000. The Amarillo Tribune is a recipient of a Tecovas Foundation grant. Xcel Energy is an Amarillo Tribune advertiser.
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