Pattern Energy wants to do what T. Boone Pickens couldn’t: deliver Texas’ overabundance of wind power to less-windy states.

The wind and transmission line developer aims to build a $1 billion, 400-mile transmission line to carry electricity generated by Texas wind turbines to Mississippi where it could be distributed across existing lines to Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and other states in the South.

Texas generates far more wind power than it can use, and it’s building a series of lines to deliver that power from rural areas where it’s produced to substations. Pattern would tap into electric stations near the Texas-Louisiana border.

“What it does is allows a new leg to be built that allows some of that power to be flowing into the South, where there aren’t as many renewable-energy opportunities,” said Pattern CEO Mike Garland.

Pattern hopes the line will attain permits within two years and estimates it will take three years to build after that.

Scott Henry, CEO of SERC Reliability Corp., which enforces standards and regulations of transmission in the territory Pattern wants to connect to Texas, said there is precedent for interconnecting transmission territories, and Congress has made rules and offered incentives to encourage those connections to safeguard the electric grid and allow for more renewable-energy development.

“The 400 miles of transmission line is obviously a very long line, and there are typical challenges that one might face with that type of project,” Henry said, noting he had not seen Pattern’s proposal. “While certainly not impossible, it would be a challenging task.”

A major challenge, said Pattern executive David Parquet, is getting utilities to buy the power. Pattern has to prove to utilities serving the Southeast, including Entergy, Tennessee Valley Authority, and Southern Co., that it can deliver power at a price that can compete with nonrenewable sources even when factoring in the cost of the new transmission line. Securing contracts with utilities is crucial to securing the funding to build the transmission line.

Congress is considering a national renewable portfolio standard—RPS—that would mandate utilities obtain a certain percentage of electricity from renewable sources. Many states already enforce some renewable mandates.

A national standard would drive utilities to seek sources like the wind power Pattern will provide, but Pattern said the company’s proposition is compelling even without the standard.

“We’d obviously like to have an RPS, but we’re really excited about the economics of high capacity factor wind and particularly connecting to the transmission already built,” Parquet said.