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Show Western Resources Power marketing agencies-interconnections By Helene C. Monberg Washington-Coal by wire will soon bv the federal government f fth?wal fields of Montana and 5 Dakota to markets in northern California- i Another key interconnection soon to ! Jilt will provide coal by wire from ifirS !S t Pacific Southwest, i Roth are new transmission lines. ! ThPV are joint ventures which the ul era Area Power Administration I " pA) a federal marketing agency, ' entered into with other utilities in (he area. when the Miles City, Mont.-ilndetwood. Mont.-ilndetwood. S. Dak., line is completed L next year, for the first time there I will be a firm intertie between the I jower grid in the Northcentral part of e country and the Western power grid. Such interties are touchy, altho they are key segments in making the United Slates and the North American power I gnd system more reliable. When Rep. i Clair Burgener, R-Calif., asked why at the House Appropriations Committee bearings on WAPA funding in March, UAPA Administrator Robert L. McPhail replied, "There is a lot of opposition op-position to tackling the big problem" of interconnections "from a lot of industry, in-dustry, because there are a lot of people concerned about construction of a na- tional grid. So if you tackle the big problem pro-blem of interconnecting the power systems in the Midcontinent and the East with the power system in the West "that upsets a lot of people." Burgener: "What is their main concern con-cern about the so called national grid? " McPhail: "The big problem is investor in-vestor owned companies are concerned about a federal takeover of the industry." in-dustry." This became such a problem when the Department of Energy (DOE) did a study of a national power grid com-j com-j pleted last year and a study on the current cur-rent reliability of' the nation's power . system completed in April that DOE . has difficulty getting data from in-! in-! dividual companies, Enver Masud, ! manager of both studies, told Western Resources Wrap up (WRW) on July 28. I lied about the need for an eastern Montana-Pacific Northwest intertie, Masud said, "We asked Bonneville E (Power Administration) to get the data f for us for the grid study, but it never 1 came thru." Other sources told WRW 1 jthe new Bonneville law was just in the process of being put together in 1979-80, . 1 and no one wanted to rock the boat over e the grid study. The Pacific Northwest s iEIectric Power Planning and Conserva-' Conserva-' fa Act was signed into law on Dec. 5, 1980, giving Bonneville new respon-1 respon-1 sibilities in assuring the adequacy of the Pacific Northwest power supply. ! WAPA MOVES AHEAD I WITH INTERTIES i WAPA has no choice but to be con-t con-t cerned about key interties, . McPhail ( made plain in his testimony before the l( to Congressional Appropriations ! Committees this spring and in a recent - telephone interview with WRW. I. "Western is the only major electrical ; system in the United States with isubstantial amounts of transmission on Mth sides of the eastwest separation" the two power grids. "Our inability to , imnsfer large blocks of power across I ' ?! Western transmission system educes the overall efficiency of the um.al P061 system operations," s cPhail told the House Appropriations d uwrnittee in March, s. Earlier, in the late 1960's and early s i'Ws, McPhail told WRW on July 13, ,. were had been interconnections bet-i bet-i een the Eastern and Western grids it interties at Fort Peck and ,e ; 'eiiowtail substations in eastern Mon-na Mon-na and at the Stegall substation in ; estem Nebraska, but there was not mmcient transmission capacity to : maintain integrated operations. So the ;sa dTu d to separated, McPhail , - to his Congressional testimony he ! bin Nation to "two freight n80"18 down Parallel tracks con-Wlth con-Wlth a rope. Any change in IroTu n either wiu snaP 11,31 na e,xPlained, "We have two large es of generation on each side of h-an, ' but ere is not enough :et ; misS'on to keep them connected." )i 'fa on July 24 Passed the 1982 XS u (HR 4144) for enery and 207 ftrP,ment Pams including I 23i kv? t0 aUow WAPA to complete a al taciliti n'ansmission line and terminal Mon 1 between Miles City in eastern ,d J U 3n? Underwood, S. Dak., a 328 608 0 I"6 3 Price te6 0f 8! of VL ? 10 comPleted by the " ea fterflSCal year- or hory 'edera Z s 18 a ioint federalnon cl 'th WA7.me8awatt a.c.-d.c.-a.c. line, CooBorlr and Basin Electric Power JJakS:' Inc- of Bismarck, N. McPhoiiTn8hecaPabilityoftheline jrf UrJ T ?Med. WAPA is construc-' construc-' " Dakou m Montana and South it Utilities' p8- the Montana-Dakota taNorDakotanStrUCtingthe iK)rti0n "One of the benefits from the DC tie at Miles City is that it will allow us to transmit any surplus, low cost coal generation in the Dakotas and the eastern part of the country into our system on the west side of the tie and then thru transmission thru Montana Power Company and thru the Bonneville Bon-neville system we will be able to transmit power all the way to Northern California," McPhail told the House Appropriations Committee. Montana Power Co. is building a 500 KV line from the Col-strip area southwest of Miles City Ci-ty to the vicinity of Townsend in western Montana, where Bonneville is planning to build a 500 KV line to connect con-nect with its system near Hot Springs in northwestern Montana. James L. Grahl, Basin Electric Power Cooperative manager, told WRW on July 29 Basin has "between 100-200 megawatts which we could sell as surplus power" to others, including WAPA from new generation being built by Basin in North Dakota. Basin is a pioneer in building lignite fired coal generating plants in North Dakota. BREAKING BOTTLENECK The second major segment of line that the House gave WAPA the go ahead to build is a new 345 KV transmission line from Craig, Colo., in northwestern Colorado to Four Corners in northwestern New Mexico to break a bottleneck in moving power from Colorado's Col-orado's coal country to New Mexico, Arizona and California. "Transmission thru this area is very weak, and it currently cur-rently is very much a bottleneck in the total Western interconnected system," McPhail told the Senate Appropriations Committee. This is also a joint federalnon federal construction venture which will cost of the federal government $39,510,000 of which $35,275,000 is programmed pro-grammed to be spent in 1982 fiscal year. When this line is built, it will also be able to move surplus coal fired generation genera-tion in Colorado to the markets in the Pacific Southwest, he said. WAPA' partner in this joint venture is Color :- Uto. Electric Association of Montra . Colo. There will be three phases., .his line, the House hearings indicated. WAPA and Colorado-Ute will jointly build a new 310 mile 345 KV double dou-ble circuit transmission line from Rifle in western Colorado to San Juan-Shiprock Juan-Shiprock in New Mexico; they will rebuild to 345 KV existing lower voltage lines from Shiprock to Four Corners in New Mexico and from Curecanti to Montrose in Colorado. In the section from Craig to Rifle, where Colorado-Ute Colorado-Ute already has a 345 KV line, Western is planning to rebuild its existing 230 KV line to 345 KV. Federal participation on the Hayden-Blue Hayden-Blue River 345 KV line being constructed con-structed by Tri-State G&T Association of Thornton in northern Colorado is also included in the 1982 WAPA budget request re-quest for this project, as are several substation additions and other facilities. This new line is of added importance to WAPA because its 10 year contract to purchase 427 megawatts of capacity from the coal fired power plant in Cen-tralia, Cen-tralia, Wash., expires at the end of this year. WAPA is talking to Pacific Gas & Electric Co (PG&E) of San Francisco about buying power from that utility to serve several of its California customers, tho the prospects aren't too bright, McPhail told WRW on July 13, with PG&E having financing problems in completing its Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California. "One of the options being considered is joint purchase pur-chase arrangements with the Modesto Irrigation District and the cities of Santa San-ta Clara and Redding, Calif., to obtain a long term supply of power from the Palo Verde Nuclear Powerplant near Phoenix, Ariz.," he said. Frederick W. Mielke, Jr., chairman of the board of PG&E, told WRW when he was here this past spring there is renewed interest by California utilities in building another intertie line between bet-ween the Pacific Northwest and Northern Nor-thern California. There are currently two 500 KV a.c. lines and one 800 KV d.c. line in the Pacific Northwest-Pacific Northwest-Pacific Southwest Intertie. A recent report of the General Accounting Office supports another d.c. line in the Pacific Intertie. WAPA will continue studies in 1982 of a new intertie line between the Dallas, Ore., and Lake Mead on the Colorado River and the Phoenix area. Such a line . was authorized with the Pacific Intertie in the mid 1960's but never was built. |