The need to upgrade aging transmission systems while integrating an increasing number of renewable energy sources could be an issue of concern at a House Water and Power Subcommittee hearing tomorrow.
Leaders from four Northwest and Southern power administrations are slated to defend their budgets before the House Natural Resources subpanel. The hearing will focus on the priorities and financial needs of the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), the Western Area Power Administration, the Southwestern Power Administration and the Southeastern Power Administration.
The four power marketing administrations are independent companies within the Department of Energy that market wholesale electricity mainly from federal hydropower projects for the West, Southeast, Southwest and Northwest.
The president's fiscal 2012 budget requested $86 million for the power marketing administrations, a decrease from the $150 million distributed in 2010. The funding is slated for grid modernization projects, investment in smart-grid technologies and a new "energy innovation hub" to focus on grid technologies.
The administration is proposing an overall spending request of $29.5 billion for DOE in fiscal 2012, a 12 percent increase from the 2010 enacted level.
Subcommittee Chairman Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) has been vocal about his support for hydropower as a cheap means of producing power while simultaneously opposing regulations that increase costs for consumers to meet environmental goals. McClintock has also been critical of power loss from hydroelectric facilities being replaced by higher-cost energy from natural gas, coal, wind and solar power.
Those concerns may resonate at this week's hearing as the power administrators discuss goals of upgrading older transmission to incorporate an increasing amount of renewable energy onto the power grid.
BPA, a federal agency funded through revenues from hydropower sales and transmission charges, is seeking to upgrade scattered, aging transmission lines to accommodate a growing number of wind farms, said BPA spokesman Michael Milstein.
BPA runs 75 percent of the transmission grid in the Northwest, and some of the lines are getting older and need to be upgraded or replaced -- and in some places expanded to accommodate more wind power, Milstein said. Many of the transmission lines were built as early as the 1930s in conjunction with the federal dams, he added.
BPA has had discussions on the proposed "I-5 Corridor Reinforcement Project" since 2009, a 500-kilovolt transmission line and associated substations reaching a span of 70 miles to accommodate burgeoning electricity demand in southwest Washington and northwest Oregon. The project has sparked testy opposition from residents who say it is redundant and would transport energy outside the region while leaving the burden of cost behind.
But BPA is also focusing on energy efficiency, research on smart-grid technology and ways to conserve power instead of building new power plants. It also has been managing electricity issues that arise in the Pacific Northwest when there are surges of wind and water, creating circumstances that can affect endangered species of fish.
Schedule: The hearing is tomorrow at 10 a.m. in 1324 Longworth House Office Building.
Witnesses: TBA.
