The Bonneville Power Administration plans to exceed inflation by $35 million per year in forecast transmission services costs during the next rate period in order to address deferred needs, a company official said.

Several Northwest federal lawmakers have proposed measures intended to slow or block attempts to breach the four lower Snake River dams.

The Bonneville Power Administration has adopted two proposed updates to the method it uses for long-term hydropower generation planning, a development generally well received by its customers as an appropriate step for addressing issues with the previous method.

The key goals of the Bonneville Power Administration's financial plan update are lowering its current leverage rate to 60 percent by 2040 and moving away from 100-percent debt financing for capital investments by using revenue financing, the agency said.

PacifiCorp has been given the final regulatory green light to begin construction on two segments of its $8-billion Energy Gateway transmission project.

The Bonneville Power Administration on May 3 began trading in the Western Energy Imbalance Market, ending decades of market skepticism from Northwest public-power utilities.

NuScale Power Inc. on May 3 announced it has completed its merger with Spring Valley Acquisition, a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company.

PacifiCorp has selected Dave Johnston Unit 4 and Jim Bridger units 3 and 4 as the best candidates in its Wyoming coal fleet for retrofitting with carbon capture, utilization and storage technology, according to a March 31 filing to the Wyoming Public Service Commission.

The Bonneville Power Administration has proposed changing how hydro generation is forecast to reflect recent climate-change trends and capture anticipated ranges of uncertainty.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a draft environmental impact statement Feb. 25 analyzing the effects of decommissioning and removing four hydroelectric dams on the lower Klamath River.

Site-characterization fieldwork has been completed at the Idaho National Laboratory that will support the licensing of a small modular reactor there, according to Carbon Free Power Project LLC.

The Bonneville Power Administration is pulling out of the ownership agreement for the 500-kV Boardman to Hemingway transmission line through eastern Oregon, ceding its 24-percent stake to Idaho Power, which would give that utility a 45-percent share. PacifiCorp remains the majority owner wit…

Portland, Oregon-based PacifiCorp is going on another hunt for renewable energy and storage in 2022, including possible resources in California, as it continues to remake its portfolio to meet upcoming clean-energy goals.

The Northwest got a blanket of snow and an extended period of freezing temperatures that started in the early hours of Dec. 26 and continued for days, driving up energy demand and causing grid outages in some areas.

Washington state on Nov. 30 used California as a model as it adopted new regulations aimed at reducing emissions from medium- and heavy-duty trucks and passenger vehicles, giving the West Coast a unified policy for new clean trucks and zero-emission vehicles.

The Bonneville Power Administration's announcement Sept. 27 that it plans to join the Western Energy Imbalance Market in March 2022, and will be keeping a close eye on other developing wholesale markets around the West, marked a historic shift for the once market-averse Pacific Northwest.

PacifiCorp's 2021 integrated resource plan continues the company on a path of investing heavily in renewables, storage and transmission, while accelerating the retirement of several coal units and beefing up energy-efficiency and demand-response programs.

PacifiCorp has completed its $3.1-billion capital investment plan—known as Energy Vision 2020—which doubled its wind production and added 140 miles of new transmission lines in Wyoming.

With one quarter to go in fiscal year 2021, the Bonneville Power Administration estimates it will end the year with net revenues of $330 million, compared with a rate-case forecast of only $38 million.

The Northwest was buzzing this week with the prospect of the Bonneville Power Administration's borrowing authority increasing by $10 billion, after the U.S. Senate passed the $1.2-trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act on Aug. 10.

The Bonneville Power Administration has reaffirmed its internal analysis showing the benefits of joining the Western Energy Imbalance Market in March 2022, and is now asking for public comment on joining the real-time market.

Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems has opted to scale back its planned Carbon Free Power Project, a first-of-its-kind small modular reactor power plant to be located on the campus of Idaho National Laboratory.

Scientists who study Pacific salmon abundance and the influence of pink salmon runs on the ocean's food web say 2020's record-low catch and abundance of the five major salmon species in the North Pacific Ocean could signal the beginning of a new reality caused by a warming ocean, which gener…

Historic high temperatures hammered the Northwest in June's final days, smashing some long-standing records, straining the grid, and causing deaths in a region accustomed to moderate summer temperatures and little need for air conditioning.

Numerous locations in the Northwest broke all-time records for high temperatures between June 26 and June 30, causing climatologists to warn of worsening drought and a shrinking water supply from added demands.

Federal energy regulators on June 17 approved transferring the license of the 163-MW Lower Klamath River Hydroelectric Project from PacifiCorp to the Klamath River Renewal Corp. and the states of Oregon and California, advancing a plan to decommission the four dams.

Two separate lawsuits have exposed the unraveling of the Colstrip Power Plant ownership group, and the inevitable collision between the decarbonization policies of Pacific Northwest states and the more coal-friendly ethos of Montana.

Forty-two percent of Snake River basin spring-summer Chinook populations have reached quasi-extinction thresholds, according to a study by Nez Perce Tribe scientists, who say if adult returns continue to decline at 19 percent per year, 77 percent of the populations will reach the threshold by 2025.

As an April 14 meeting to discuss settlement proposals in the Bonneville Power Administration’s rate case ground on for nearly three hours, it became clear time was pressing on the effort.

A series of winter storms over Valentine's Day weekend caused "catastrophic damage" to Portland General Electric's system and left hundreds of thousands of Oregonians without power for several days.

Many customers of the Bonneville Power Administration are concerned about the agency's proposed use of revenue financing to fund projects, saying power rates could have been 4.5 percent lower had that approach not been used.

John Hairston will become the 16th administrator and CEO of the Bonneville Power Administration and the first person of color to lead the agency in its 84-year history, the U.S. Department of Energy said Jan. 7.

PacifiCorp would transfer the operating licenses of four hydroelectric projects on the lower Klamath River to the states of Oregon and California, along with the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, but would continue to pay nearly half the costs of removing the dams, according to a deal annou…

Wildfires continued to rage in Washington and Oregon on Sept. 11, as utilities hustled to restore power to areas that had been shut off, where and when it was safe.