November 2004 Newsletter

Regional Update on Wind Energy in the Pacific Northwest

By Bonneville Power Administration

Here in the Northwest as much as 800 megawatts of new wind-generated energy could hit the region's electrical grid by the end of 2005. Steve Enyeart, TBL customer service engineer, says, "Planning, environment, design and construction may be faced with some interesting challenges in the coming months if we are going to meet the schedules proposed by the developers wanting to take advantage of the tax credit."

Enyeart said that the 800 MW could come from five new wind farms in Oregon and Washington that are nearly ready to go. That could mean $500 million to $900 million in new investment in the region.

To interconnect those five, BPA must build three new substations, all funded by the wind developers. "In order to meet developers' schedules, we have to begin building those substations by next March and complete them by November," Enyeart said. He estimated that could add up to $20 million worth of work for BPA. Another developer has recently suggested BPA rebuild 14 miles of the Goshen-Palisades transmission line in Idaho to connect a proposed wind plant near Idaho Falls to PacifiCorp's system.

"All these projects mean close coordination with our environmental staff," said Rick Yarde, environmental protection specialist. "We're working with TBL to streamline schedules and focus our environmental studies on the impacts of those proposed interconnections." One way of streamlining is by doing facilities designs and environmental studies simultaneously rather than sequentially.

Yarde says the sudden crush of work will be challenging as wind developers revive proposals that have been lingering in the request queue. "Even if BPA has no money or construction involved, we still have to study the impacts of an interconnection," Yarde said.

In the Power Business Line, customer account executive Debra Malin foresees an increasing number of requests for network wind integration service and storage and shaping services, but she says, "We're ready for such requests."

Most of the interconnection studies are nearly complete, and environmental studies for the five Northwest projects are underway. However, there are still transmission capacity and operational issues. Enyeart says there is no available transmission capacity to sell in most of the corridors serving the new wind plants. "Nearly all these new projects will initially depend on nonfirm transmission to get their power to market," he said. Even with the successful completion of the proposed McNary-John Day 500-kilovolt transmission line, additional firm transmission wouldn't be available in the primary corridor until Spring 2007 at the earliest.