Nw Power Council Adopts Draft Five-Year Energy Plan

The Northwest Power Planning Council Wednesday adopted a draft five-year energy plan that members conceded will have less relevance as deregulation sweeps through the utility industry.

But, they added, the 106-page document - plus appendices - represents the best comprehensive assessment of the region’s resources and options.

“It’s written in a way to provide a helpful analysis,” said Chairman John Etchart.

The chief beneficiaries will be the 24 members of a task force conducting a comprehensive review of the structure of the energy industry in the Northwest. That group is expected to recommend possible legislative changes in December.

The council set an unusually long 12-month period for public comment on its energy plan to allow for completion of the task force’s work.

The Northwest Power Act of 1980 requires the council to prepare a regional power plan every five years. The plan adopted Wednesday is the fourth.

Unlike its predecessors, the new version does not recommend any action, noted Dick Watson, the council’s director for power planning.

“We’re not looking at this as a plan in the traditional sense, go out and do X, Y and Z,” he said.

Such a document, Watson said, “Would be obsolete from the day it was issued.”

Past plans have been only partly successful at achieving the council’s goals, he added.

But the draft notes the region has saved more than 1,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to supply Seattle, in part because of coordinated planning.

Conservation could be a victim of the transition to the deregulated market, the plan warns.

Although cost-effective in the long run, upfront costs of conservation are higher than those of other resources. But foregoing some measures could cost the region an additional $1.7 billion for power over the next 20 years.

The task force and states should consider ways to assure the region obtains the maximum amount of conservation, the plan says.

Overall, the plan estimates the region’s demand for power will grow at a rate of 1.3 percent, or 280 megawatts per year.

As much as 3,000 megawatts may be available on the West Coast energy market through which utilities from the Southwest to Canada buy and sell electricity to meet seasonal or short-term needs.

The average cost would be around 2 cents per kilowatt-hour for the next several years.

Natural-gas turbines could supply another 6,800 megawatts at around 3 cents per kilowatt-hour, depending on the price of fuel.

Hydropower, generator of two-thirds of the region’s electricity, has been sapped by changes made in dam operations to assist fish.

Although some minor increases are possible, substantial losses are just as likely.

Not least among the potential changes are overhauls of the council and the Bonneville Power Administration.

“Central planning does not have the same role, if it has a role at all, in a deregulated environment,” Etchart said. “The council itself is in play.”

But, the plan says, market competition will not deliver economic - let alone social and environmental - benefits equally to all customers.

“There may still be a need for strategic thinking about the directions the electricity industry might take and the implications for the region,” the plans says.

, DataTimes