Legalectric

What a name…

There’s a Bonneville Power Authority transmission project, well, there’s more than one, but take a look at this one:

This is a project proposed by Bonneville Power Authority, which is a federal agency — that makes it different than a “public service corporation” applying for a project, the regulation of their transmission.

Here’s the BPA’s I-5 Corridor Reinforcement Project page.

And they have a “need” page explaining why it’s needed:

BPA’s I-5 Corridor “Need” page

And of course this is where they start to lose me:

Over the years, as power production and electrical use have grown, the transmission system in this area has become increasingly congested and has moved closer to reaching its capacity. In addition, existing firm transmission service requests and new firm transmission service requests received through BPA’s 2008 Network Open Season process further increases the likelihood that the system will soon reach or exceed its capacity. Network Open Season is a yearly process that allows utilities, power generators, and power marketers to make long-term transmission service requests on BPA’s transmission system. If an additional line is not built, continued congestion could raise serious reliability concerns and, possibly, could lead to power interruptions.

The proposed I-5 Corridor Reinforcement Project would help respond to these existing and new requests for transmission service, help accommodate load growth and address reliability concerns.

Where are links to the studies documenting reliability concerns?  Where is the documentation of load growth?  Where is the list of existing and new requests for transmission service?  Let’s see…

Here’s a June 2, 2010 presentation with a few hints (the pdf file says April, so I’ll label it that):

Presentation I-5 April 2010

This presentation notes that 15% of the power is sold elsewhere, and it notes that some of the power used in the area comes from elsewhere… but look at the map above and look for the word “Dam” and you’ll see there’s a lot of local generation going on.  “Network Open Season” sounds like utilities lining up to identify the landowners who are the targets.  Just because someone wants transmission service does not mean that it is reasonable, feasible or prudent to provide it, particularly if the capital costs of that transmission, reactive power and line loss cost is not factored in to the price used in “economic dispatch.”

Here are some other powerpoints

WECC Steering Team Presentation- Technical Analysis April 2007

WECC Final TAC Report

Once again, this is just a small part of a much larger plan — I guess we’ll have to do some digging to get at that info…

Once more with feeling…

Where are links to the studies documenting reliability concerns?  Where is the documentation of load growth?  Where is the list of existing and new requests for transmission service?