Northwest Power Play

It seems as if wind energy continues to draw the short straw whenever a major policy decision-point is reached. The fossil fuel and nuclear lobbies are extremely powerful and well-endowed. While the American Wind Energy Association is a formidable advocate for wind energy in the U.S., it still is still battling Goliath in these grudge matches. (GW)

Wind Dispute is Costly

BPA excess hydro at play

By Bill Opalka
Energy Biz Insider
June 8, 2011

Federal officials are saying an excess of hydropower in the Pacific Northwest has forced them to order some wind generation to shut down. The wind industry and its allies are saying it is being penalized while excess fossil fuel generation remains on the power system.

Federal officials are saying an excess of hydropower in the Pacific Northwest has forced them to order some wind generation to shut down. The wind industry and its allies are saying it is being penalized while excess fossil fuel generation remains on the power system.

What’s not in dispute is that thousands of megawatt-hours of wind generation in the region are being lost, costing the industry millions.

The federal Bonneville Power Administration [3], which runs the transmission system in the Northwest, is at the center of the dispute, which seems headed for the courts or federal regulators, or both.

Rob Gramlich, the senior vice president of public policy for the American Wind Energy Association [4], says the lost revenue from broken contracts for wind generators is well into seven figures and the dispute likely will not be resolved in the current season.

“This is a damaging precedent that will chill investment,” he said. “Bonneville also has a conflict of interest. It’s like they’re an air traffic controller that owns planes and allows only their planes to land.”

BPA said last weekend that it limited the energy output of regional generators, including wind generation, during four separate intervals. The total amount of generation impacted was about 18,819 megawatt hours.

According to BPA, the action was required to protect salmon and steelhead, maintain the reliability of the power grid and avoid shifting costs to BPA’s customers. It came as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers [5] increased river flows to maintain space in upstream reservoirs for further runoff from the largest Northwest snowpack since 1997.

On May 13 BPA signed an “Environmental Redispatch” Record of Decision [6]. That is a policy that during times of high hydropower generation, lower electric demand, and high wind generation, could lead wind generation to be curtailed without any compensation to wind project owners.

“There are thousands of megawatts of fossil generation are still operating when those could be displaced,” Gramlich said.

The curtailment dispute coincides with the annual conference of the AWEA in Anaheim, Calif., which may have given the issue more visibility than it otherwise might have received.

“The actions that the Bonneville Power Administration took are in direct conflict with the stated goals of the Department of Energy, the Obama Administration and many key energy policy leaders,” said Earl Blumenauer, U.S. House of Representatives (D-OR), at a news conference.

Inaction on a four-year-old study on integrating renewable conducted in the region is partly to blame. Transmission constraints are also a problem, as excess power cannot be dispatched easily to other areas of the West Coast.

Pat Ford, executive director of Save Our Wild Salmon [7] contradicted the BPA contention that protecting fish was the imperative behind the move. He described the statement as inaccurate.

“In general, wind generation and salmon generation are complementary objectives, not competing objectives.”

But for now they are. And unraveling this dispute may take some time.

Bill Opalka is editor of RenewablesBiz Daily