• Facing transmission shortage amid data center boom
• Updates milestones in ongoing GI cluster study
• Ongoing queue reform aims to streamline project readiness

The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) is connecting projects to the grid in 2025 and 2026, following a lull in its interconnection of large generator projects, and is also planning to complete its ongoing cluster study’s first phase by the end of the year.

BPA is connecting one 204 MW wind project and two solar projects totaling 100 MW in 2025.

In 2026, it is connecting two wind projects totaling 392 MW and nine solar projects totaling 1709 MW. Of those solar projects, two are co-located with battery storage.

This announcement follows criticism of the Pacific Northwest balancing authority amid a shortage in transmission and the boom of data centers.

Michelle Manary, BPA’s VP for transmission marketing and sales, told NPM that the region’s history has been one that enjoyed plenty of transmission capacity when BPA built out transmission lines in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Then, in the late 2010s, BPA saw a wind boom and built out more transmission to accommodate.

“What we’ve hit in the last three to four years is we have been slammed with data centers and growth on industrial and mining loads,” Manary said, adding that BPA has been following the model which is request, look at the build, figure it out and get going on the project. However, the process can take 10-to-20 years depending on what is needed.

Jeff Cook, BPA’s VP for transmission planning and asset management, told NPM that transmission is available in the region except for some pockets which are predominantly where data centers have rapidly grown. These regions include central Oregon and the Portland-metro area where rapid growth has been seen.

Cook added that these data centers don’t show up in a matter of years, but rather in months. In fact, of BPA’s 24 GW load request, about 18 GW is for data centers alone.

“We had a surplus for many years, and we have consumed that,” Cook said of the transmission that was built out, but pointed to BPA’s identified USD 5.5bn new generation transmission, comprised of 23 identified lines. These lines would add over 6,000 MW onto the system in specific areas, mostly across the Cascades, which Cook said is a “critical area.”

These identified lines would also run north to south, accommodating resource diversity.

Those 23 projects are split into two groups. Set one is from the previous cluster study and are underway with many in design and moving forward. The second set of projects are in the initial early scoping stage to sort out land and right-of-way issues.

“Is more needed? Yes,” Cook said, “but I think it gives us a good start and there are times where we aren’t able to provide service off the bat because these pockets are growing so fast, so quickly, and to build transmission is a 15-year type of project.”

He highlighted Idaho Power’s 500 kV Boardman-to-Hemingway line, which began in 2010 but still has not seen a shovel in the ground yet.

Cook said that BPA is “aggressively working with local utilities” which serve these loads but explained that when 65 GW comes in the door, it “breaks the model because there is not that much capacity available” and BPA’s load overall is about 11 GW to 12 GW.

“You have five times what our typical BPA load is trying to get onto the system,” he said.

However, the large queue is believed to come mainly from developers looking to get transmission when they are competing for the same RFPs that IOUs put out. That duplication is contributed to being one of the big challenges of the region.

Queue reform

Right now, BPA is in the middle of a transmission planning reform. Earlier this year, BPA paused its long-term queue and Manary said that the reform is looking at potentially setting requirements to enter the queue and how to get to the projects ready to be built.

BPA also went through a generator interconnection (GI) reform because it had 175 GW in its GI queue, which Cook described as “unfathomable.”

“We calculate 85% to 90% of those will go away but we have to study them all,” Cook said. “We did a GI reform, which required site control, material type requirements, and got it down considerably. The reform now is looking at how we can do the same paring down of the requests to get the serious ones.”

Manary said that, for the GI queue, BPA added a penalty for early exists after a certain point and raised the non-refundable processing fee to USD 10,000.

She added that BPA is looking at two timeframes: a long-term solution and then a transition because the queue is so large.

In the short term, BPA is considering three areas to evaluate readiness requirements like what was seen in the GI queue. This includes looking at a number of different services and products, while in the long-term potentially following other RTO efforts.

For the ongoing GI cluster study that is underway, Cook said that it is being done in two phases. The first phase is anticipated to be completed in about four to five months, followed by a period for customers to look at the review and determine if they want to continue forward in the second phase. Depending on how many move forward will determine how long the second cluster study will take.

While BPA is not looking to privatize services as developers have called for, Cook said that there have been discussions for customer build out for some sites.

“We are working with them because there are cases where it would make sense,” Cook said. “Some substations are in the heart of our system and BPA will need to own, operate and maintain them.”

As for whether BPA or its customers build these sites, Cook said they will need to be constructed to BPA’s standards and requirements.

“We have been talking with them more on the fringe areas if they’re interested in possibly building,” he said, adding that resources are the next main concern. “We would use the same contractors most likely, environmental issues they would have to deal with and issues with materials, so we are all competing for the same materials. Could there be time saving? Possibly, but I don’t see it as significant.”

Rather, Cook said that slow permitting times are a challenge that could speed up the process.

Manary pointed out that the queue backlog is a problem shared across the nation and is not unique to BPA.

“We know there is an issue, and we have to do things differently, so are looking at everything,” she said. “We are wholesale designing aspects of it. Developers in the Pacific Northwest, come out and workshop with us. We’re very open to a lot of ideas and different approaches, but you have to be part of the solution. It won’t be overnight, but we are redesigning this so we can get ahead of the curve and proactively plan to meet the region’s needs.”

*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM US subscribers.

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