by Steve Ernst, May 20, 2010 http://www.energyprospects.com/cgi-bin/package_display.pl?packageID=3226 (registration required)
The new section stretches from the Ben Lomond substation, in Box Elder County, Utah, to the Terminal substation, located near the Salt Lake City International Airport, and is part of the Gateway Central section of the project. The process to energize this section began March 19 and was completed March 30, the company said.
PacifiCorp says the northern section of the segment should be energized by the end of this year. The section will extend an additional 90 miles north to the Populus substation near Downey, Idaho, and would complete the first full segment of the Energy Gateway Transmission Project.
"It has been two decades since any major additions were made to the main transmission grid in the West," said Richard Walje, president of Rocky Mountain Power, in a prepared statement. "When completed, this and other transmission additions will ensure customers in the states we serve have access to electricity at reasonable prices."
In other transmission news, BPA has informed Idaho Power that the agency will not participate in the Boardman to Hemingway transmission project.
BPA spokesman Doug Johnson said that on May 10, the agency gave its "preliminary recommendation that we not participate in the Boardman to Hemingway project."
"Our analysis indicates that financially participating in the Boardman to Hemingway project would cost about three to five times as much a year as continuing the arrangements under which we currently serve our southern Idaho customers," Johnson said via email.
Currently, BPA pays Idaho Power to wheel power through its service area to BPA customers in southern and eastern Idaho and Wyoming.
But BPA is accepting informal customer and stakeholder feedback on the recommendation through the end of this month, Johnson said.
The B2H project, which would run from the Boardman substation near Boardman, Ore., to the Hemingway substation near Melba, Idaho, has drawn the ire of locals who petitioned the Oregon PUC to open a contested case hearing in Idaho Power's integrated resource plan case to determine if the project is needed.
Move Idaho Power and Idaho (?) resident Nancy Peyron asked for the hearing, arguing that Oregon EFSC is required to conduct energy siting proceedings as contested cases, but those cases do not question whether or not a facility is needed.
Move Idaho Power and Ms. Peyron argued that EFSC's facility siting proceedings are contested cases that rely on the OPUC-acknowledged IRP, so the OPUC should hold a contested hearing on whether or not the B2H line is needed.
On May 17, ALJ Sarah Wallace ruled that the OPUC did not have to hold a contested case in the Idaho Power IRP because the commission generally does not address the need for a specific resource, but determines whether or not the utility has proposed a portfolio with the "best combination of cost and risk."
"The Legislature delegated the authority to determine the need for a proposed transmission line to the EFSC, not to this commission," Judge Wallace said in her order. "The Commission would be exceeding its legislatively delegated authority if it attempted to determine whether the EFSC's need standard has been met."
