One option to support grid reliability in the coming years is expanding natural gas-fired power plant capacity, while a portion of the state's planned battery energy storage buildout could be deferred, a report from California PUC staff said this month.
Utilities and other stakeholders around the West have jump-started an expansive, multiyear effort to develop an extended day-ahead wholesale energy market across the region, viewing it as a pathway to help power sellers and buyers more efficiently operate and meet climate change goals.
An Irish wind developer and a French energy giant have formed a joint venture to develop offshore wind in the United States, with an eye toward the wind-rich waters off the coasts of Oregon and California.
Portland General Electric on Oct. 15 took a major step toward meeting Oregon's clean energy standard by releasing a request for proposals seeking 1,000 MW of clean energy resources. The utility also announced plans to increase its access to distributed energy resources and expand its demand …
A dozen of some of the biggest utilities in the West are banding together to evaluate regional market opportunities, giving more momentum to the growing interest in forming a centralized market in the West to help meet state-mandated carbon-reduction goals.
Even as members continue hashing out program details, the Northwest Power Pool's Western Resource Adequacy Program has moved from design into implementation.
Wind energy dominated bids in Puget Sound Energy's hunt for resources to help the utility meet Washington state clean-energy mandates and decrease its market exposure, according to company information.
A joint C$260 million five-year plan introduced Sept. 28 by the British Columbia government and BC Hydro will make it easier and more affordable for customers to use more of Hydro's surplus hydroelectricity in place of fossil fuels to power their homes, buildings, businesses and vehicles, th…
Bonneville's announcement Sept. 27 that it plans join Western EIM in March 2022, and will be keeping a close eye on other developing wholesale markets around the West, marked a historic shift for the Pacific Northwest.
Seattle City Light has partnered with the Port of Seattle, the Northwest Seaport Alliance, a couple truck manufacturers and two national labs to study using renewable hydrogen to fuel freight trucks hauling cargo to and from the port.
Portland General Electric has asked Oregon regulators to increase the cap on its Green Energy Affinity Rider (GEAR) tariff in order to help two companies in its service territory meet their clean energy goals.
Northwest utilities spent nearly $400 million to create approximately 145 aMW of energy savings in 2020, or about $2.75 million per average megawatt, according to a presentation at the Northwest Power and Conservation Council's Sept. 15 meeting.
Oregon fell short of meeting its zero-emission vehicles goals, but momentum is building as consumers will have more and more models to choose from over the next few years, according to Oregon Department of Energy's "2021 Biennial Zero-Emission Vehicle Report" released Sept. 15.
Homeowners continued shifting to LEDs across the Northwest in 2020, according to the latest residential lighting market analysis by the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, which found that the highly efficient bulbs made up 67 percent of sales last year, up from 63 percent in 2019 and from…
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.
An annual U.S. Department of Energy report shows that national land-based wind generation continues to grow and provides community benefits that exceed the direct costs of generation.
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.
As California works to build out a generation portfolio to meet the state's future electric supply needs, state regulators have laid out a proposed resource portfolio through 2032 based on meeting the state's 38-million-metric-ton greenhouse gas target.
The U.S. electric system was generally reliable in 2020 despite extreme weather and other events, but energy and resource adequacy issues escalated in parts of the Western Interconnection and Texas, the national reliability organization said in a new report.
Portland-based NuScale Power is exploring plans to work with Xcel Energy as the operator of future power plants using small modular nuclear reactor technology it's developing.
As the Colorado River basin region enters its 22nd year of drought, conditions have deteriorated to the point that the federal government declared a shortage on the river for the first time, based on projected 2022 operating conditions for Lake Mead.
The Northwest Power Pool is recruiting as big a cast as possible for its budding resource adequacy program.
Should the Northwest join a centralized market or start its own?
Portland General Electric has agreed to accelerate the depreciation schedule on its 20 percent share of the Colstrip power plant to 2025 in hopes of cutting the aging coal-plant from its portfolio as soon as possible.
In the final record of decision released July 28 for its BP-22 rate case and TC-22 tariff proceeding, BPA affirmed its June 25 draft decision to decrease power rates by an average of 2.5 percent per year over fiscal years 2022-2023, and cut the earlier proposed average transmission rate of 1…
BPA has reaffirmed its internal analysis showing the benefits to joining the Western EIM in March 2022, and is now asking for public comments on joining the real-time market.
BPA has set an ambitious schedule for answering questions about the proposed regional resource adequacy program under the auspices of the Northwest Power Pool.
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.
With the COVID-19 pandemic appearing to decline, Seattle City Light's new strategic plan charts a course to bounce back with vigor.
FERC issued a preliminary permit to Daybreak Power in late June for its proposed 2,650 MW Halverson Canyon Pumped Storage project near Creston, Wash., about 35 miles upstream of Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River.
A fast-growing, massive wildfire in southwest Oregon disrupted exports of electricity from the Northwest July 9-14 as California sweated through another heat wave, forcing the state's grid operator to call for voluntary power conservation and to edge toward invoking rolling blackouts.
A Northwest Power and Conservation Council advisory committee meeting was delayed a week to address modeling errors uncovered after concerns were raised about unexpected forecasts.
King County is poised to study waste-to-energy (WTE) technology as a way to avert maxing-out its Cedar Hills Landfill in 2040, but will have to address greenhouse gas emission restrictions imposed by the State of Washington if it opts to use it.
Historic high temperatures swaddled 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.
The Northwest had plenty of available capacity to meet increased demand during the recent heat storm, including an unusually healthy contribution from renewable energy, according to the Northwest Power Pool.
Puget Sound Energy issued an all-resource generation request for proposals June 30, after making several significant but limited changes required by state regulators [UE-210220].
California needs to find more low-carbon, reliable energy resources to confront heat, drought and wildfires that will become more intense due to effects of climate change, energy officials said at a recent virtual conference.
Working with public- and private-sector partners, the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance shaved 37 aMW off the region's load in 2020, which beats the group's 27 aMW target by more than one-third, according to its annual report.
While British Columbia is a leader in electric vehicle adoption within Canada, the increased demand for power from this will only be evident in the south coast region, says the draft of BC Hydro's 2021 integrated resource plan.
A searing heat wave and worsening drought across the West had electricity customers and grid operators holding their breath about grid reliability, but major outages were avoided in California and across the West.
PacifiCorp's 2020 all-resource request for proposals attracted an eye-popping 40,500 MW of renewable resources and storage capacity from across the West, which the utility has now whittled down to a final shortlist of nearly 3,250 MW, PacifiCorp said in a June 15 filing with the Oregon PUC […
An open solicitation to allocate transmission capacity on the TransWest Express Transmission Project began June 7, according to PA Consulting, which serves as the independent manager of the process.
Puget Sound Energy has signed a new deal for 350 MW of Montana wind and extended a 40 MW hydropower contract to help the utility move away from carbon-emitting resources and to rely less on short-term market purchases.
PacifiCorp and Bellevue Wash.-based TerraPower announced plans June 1 to potentially site an advanced nuclear reactor at one of PacifiCorp's four coal-fired power plants in Wyoming slated for retirement.
Portland General Electric is in negotiations with the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs to extend its power purchase agreement for the tribes' share of the 500 MW Pelton Round Butte hydroelectric project and the net output from its re-regulation plant.
Idaho Falls Power is hanging by the proverbial thread—a single transmission line through a single substation connects thousands of homes and businesses in and around the city to the regional grid. If the Goshen substation goes down, power is out for miles around.
The specter of impending capacity shortfalls has loomed over the Northwest's electric power sector for several years.
Australian-based Woodside Petroleum is pulling out of the proposed C$30 billion Kitimat LNG project in a move that puts the export megaproject in jeopardy, leaving British Columbia with only two LNG projects still under development where seven years ago there were as many as 20 on the drawin…
Small modular reactors can be a competitively priced source of carbon-free energy for Washington state in coming years, a study funded by the U.S. Department of Energy says.
California needs another 11.5 GW of electric supply resources—about five times the capacity of the retiring Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant—to meet the region's expected demand in 2026, the California PUC said in a May 21 proposed decision.
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