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BPA Supports Wind Power by Staff BPA Journal, April 2009

BPA is a national leader in integrating large amounts of wind power in its transmission system. To stay that way, BPA's Wind Integration Team is doing a lot of highly technical, high-stakes work.

"We're literally changing the way large-scale electric generation and transmission operate," said Eric King, WIT team lead.

For example, BPA has joined several Western utilities in a pilot to net out moment-to-moment differences in power frequency among their respective areas to save costs for all parties. If this works well, utilities may share more transmission operation techniques. The pilot, called the ADI for Area Control Error Diversity Interchange, involves PacifiCorp, Idaho Power Company, NorthWestern Energy and Glacier Wind. The latter is a balancing authority established in Montana specifically for wind energy.

Within BPA, the WIT has defined the federal hydropower system's ability to support variations in wind power output, developed a methodology to allocate costs of wind integration services to beneficiaries, and devised an operating approach to assure BPA can maintain system reliability while continuing to add very large amounts of wind power to its transmission grid.

With more than 2,000 megawatts of wind power now connected to BPA's grid and thousands more megawatts expected, BPA is increasing its wind integration efforts. The WIT's next technical challenges and a rundown of BPA's other wind-related activities are recounted in a new fact sheet, "How BPA supports wind power in the Pacific Northwest," posted at www.bpa.gov/corporate/About_BPA/wind/index.cfm.