PacifiCorp and PGE team up in effort to build new power lines

Ted Sickinger, The Oregonian Ted Sickinger, The Oregonian

Oregon's two largest electric utilities may team up to build a major new transmission line from northeast Oregon to Salem.

PacifiCorp said Tuesday that it has entered discussions with Portland General Electric Co. on jointly constructing and owning the 210-mile, 500-kilovolt line.

A partnership, the companies said, would help control costs -- the line is projected to cost $825 million -- and minimize the transmission footprint and environmental impact.

PGE originally proposed the Cascade Crossing line last year as part of a resource plan with Oregon's Public Utility Commission. It is about six months into a three-year permitting process. It hopes to break ground in 2013 and have the line, beginning at Boardman on the Columbia River Gorge, up and running two years later.

Both utilities have emphasized the need for more transmission capacity to get around bottlenecks in the current system and accommodate growing amounts of wind power being generated along the gorge and in Wyoming.

PGE has natural gas and coal-fired power plants in Boardman, just west of Hermiston and the Umatilla Army Depot. It has proposed a new natural gas plant there, and could ultimately build a third if it closes its Boardman coal plant to meet haze-reduction rules or avoid carbon taxes. The company owns a wind farm in Sherman County and has received multiple requests from new wind farm operators to connect to the Cascade Crossing line.

PacifiCorp has embarked on a push to upgrade and expand transmission linking the east side of its service territory in Utah, Wyoming and Idaho with the west side in Oregon, Washington and California. Such an expansion, it says, not only would help it access untapped wind resources in Wyoming but also increase reliability and flexibility by allowing it to send power east or west. The company is also in discussions with Idaho Power about taking an equity interest in a line running from Boardman to its Hemingway substation near Boise.

New transmission lines are typically controversial projects, meeting opposition from environmentalists and private landowners. About 27 miles of Cascade Crossing would be on U.S. Forest Service land, with an additional 30 miles over the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs reservation and most of the rest on private land.

The companies hope to make a decision on their potential partnership by the end of the year. PGE has applied to the federal government for right-of-way grants and permits to cross federally managed lands. The Oregon Energy Facility Siting Council and the U.S. Forest Service hosted a series of public meetings this summer and closed an initial public comment period on the project this week.

"There is going to be ample opportunity for public input in this process," said Brianne Hyder, a PGE spokeswoman.

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