Babcock & Brown has completed the financing of the Trans Bay Cable project, a new HVDC transmission line that will run under the San Francisco Bay. The TBC will provide a new source of power for the city of San Francisco, helping to lower long-term energy costs and provide transmission reliability for the entire Bay Area.

"The completion of financing represents the final milestone in the preconstruction development of the Trans Bay Cable project and we now look forward to commencing construction of the transmission line, which will provide San Francisco and the Greater Bay Area with an innovative solution to help address its growing power needs and the reliability of its transmission grid," said David Parquet, TBC project manager at Babcock & Brown. "Construction of the Trans Bay Cable will be an environmentally benign process and, once complete, the TBC will assist in providing San Francisco with access to the abundant renewable energy sources of Northern California."

"The sound fundamentals of the TBC project ensured strong support for the financing of the project," said Mike Garland, head of North American Infrastructure for Babcock & Brown. "In cooperation with the city of Pittsburg, Babcock & Brown developed the idea for the Trans Bay Cable as a creative solution to several Bay Area transmission problems. The California ISO determined after extensive stakeholder meetings that it was the best solution. TBC represents the first purely privately-proposed and financed solution to meet the reliability needs of a regional utility grid in the country."

The Trans Bay Cable is a 53-mile long HVDC transmission line that will run under the Bay, connecting the electric grid near the city of Pittsburg to San Francisco. The project, which will provide capacity for the transmission of 400 MW of electricity, will commence construction in the fourth quarter of 2007, with completion expected first quarter 2010. At each end of the cable, a converter station will be built to convert the electricity into DC or AC, as appropriate, for use on the power grid. The project will not need its own power plant, but rather will transmit existing power from the Pittsburg Substation to a converter station in San Francisco.

In July 2005, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the rate principals for the TBC project. In September 2005, the Board of Governors of the California ISO (ISO) chose the TBC project over several other alternatives as the most feasible energy transmission project for San Francisco and northern San Mateo County. In August 2007, the project received its final discretionary approval from the Bay Conservation and Development Commission in San Francisco, setting the stage for completion of financing for the project.