Powerlines above the Columbia River move electricity from the Bonneville Dam to customers across the region in Hood River County, Oregon, on July 25, 2024. (Jordan Gale/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
The Bonneville Power Administration on Tuesday identified roughly $3 billion of transmission line and substation projects it said would be key for accommodating growing electricity demand and the expansion of wind and solar power.
Bonneville, the largest supplier of electricity in the Pacific Northwest, is outlining the infrastructure plans as electricity demand is expected to rise substantially in the years ahead and as Washington is pressing to get more power from renewable sources.
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The 13 proposed projects are in the early stages of development and must undergo preliminary engineering and environmental reviews before final decisions are made about whether to move ahead with construction, the agency said in a statement.
They would be in addition to other projects BPA put forward in July 2023.
In total, Bonneville says it has more than 20 proposed grid expansion projects in the works, with an estimated total cost of about $5 billion.
“The 13 transmission projects being announced today by BPA represent a big step forward on system capacity and reliability,” said David Crane, undersecretary for infrastructure at the U.S. Department of Energy, of which the BPA is a division.
Demand for electricity expected to grow by 30% in the next 10 years
Established in 1937, BPA sells wholesale power to utilities, municipalities, and other large-scale buyers. The electricity comes from 31 federal hydroelectric dams in the Northwest, the Columbia Generating Station nuclear power plant, and other smaller power plants.
Electricity demand in the Northwest is expected to grow by more than 30% in the next decade, according to a report released earlier this year by the Pacific Northwest Utilities Conference Committee. That’s triple a prediction from three years ago.
Large data centers, high-tech manufacturing, and electrification in buildings and transportation – with technology like heat pumps and electric vehicles – are among the factors driving demand.
BPA Administrator and CEO John Hairston said the projects that the agency is outlining would not be possible without additional borrowing authority that lawmakers from the Northwest pushed to include in the federal infrastructure package that President Biden signed into law in 2021.
That law increased the BPA’s borrowing authority with the U.S. Treasury by $10 billion to $17.7 billion. This is the main way the BPA finances capital projects.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, of Washington, who led efforts to get the expanded borrowing authority written into the infrastructure law, applauded BPA’s plans.
“These investments will not only create thousands of construction jobs,” she said in a statement, “they will help revitalize our Pacific Northwest grid so we can take advantage of countless manufacturing, electrification, and emission reduction opportunities.”
BPA will host a public meeting at 10 a.m. Thursday to discuss the projects. More details on the meeting can be found on the BPA website, along with a list of the 13 newly announced projects.
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