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BPA Breaks Ground on New Power Line by Staff BPA Journal, May 2014

The new line is expected to carry more than 800 megawatts of renewable wind energy,
enough to power about half a million Northwest homes when the wind is blowing.

BPA will begin constructing the Central Ferry-Lower Monumental transmission line this month. The new line is expected to carry more than 800 megawatts of renewable wind energy, enough to power about half a million Northwest homes when the wind is blowing.

The 38-mile, 500-kilovolt line in Washington will connect the new Central Ferry Substation in Garfield County to the existing Lower Monumental Substation in Walla Walla County. It is expected to be energized in December 2015.

"Building the right facilities in the right place at the right time is a key principle of our long-term transmission services planning process," said Richard Shaheen, BPA vice president for Engineering and Technical Services.

"Specifically, this project will add critical transmission grid capacity, support new transmission requests from generators in the Snake River area and be a welcome boost to allow additional power to flow between areas east of the Cascade Range to heavily populated areas in the west.

BPA put construction on hold in August 2011 because of uncertainties regarding the need for the new line. However, in August 2013, BPA announced it was moving forward with construction. Existing customer need coupled with an agreement for Portland General Electric to acquire phase two of Puget Sound Energy's Lower Snake River Wind Project, which PGE renamed the Tucannon River Wind Farm, required construction activities to begin this spring.

The Tucannon River Wind Farm will help PGE satisfy Oregon's renewable energy standard, which requires the utility to supply 15 percent of the energy its customers use from renewable resources by 2015 and 25 percent by 2025. local and regional economies."

For more than 75 years, BPA has been the major developer of energy infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest. Electric utilities and power consumers depend on BPA to maintain reliable transmission service at low rates and meet growing demands for electricity.

Numerous power generation projects, including large wind projects, have requested interconnection with the BPA transmission system in the Snake River area. After studying the transmission system, BPA determined that there is not enough available transmission capacity to accommodate the requests. The new line will allow BPA to meet the transmission requests and