Pacific Northwest Resource Adequacy Forum

Background
In 2005, the Council and the Bonneville Power Administration created the Resource Adequacy Forum and tasked it to develop a consensus-based adequacy standard for the Pacific Northwest power supply. The purpose of the standard is to provide an early warning should resource development fail to keep pace with demand growth (as what happened during the late 1990s, leading up to the energy crisis of 2001). The Council adopted the Forum’s initial proposal in April of 2008. After three years of testing and a comprehensive peer review of the methodology, the Council adopted the Forum’s proposed revision to the standard on December 6, 2011.

The standard does not mandate compliance or imply any enforcement mechanisms. Regional adequacy assessments are not intended to apply directly to individual utilities because no utility has the same load and resource profile as the region. However, the probabilistic methodology imbedded in the standard is recommended for utilities to do their own assessments.

The adequacy standard is not intended to provide a resource planning target nor is it a surrogate for integrated resource planning processes, such as the one used to develop the Council's power plan. However, the analytical information generated with each regional assessment should provide utility planners with a wealth of valuable information that can be used in their resource acquisition planning analyses. Along with an annual adequacy assessment, the Forum will produce a State of the System report, which will include; 1) statistical information regarding potential shortfall events (frequency, duration and magnitude), 2) conditions under which events may occur, 3) timing of events (e.g. which months are more susceptible), 4) expected use of market resources and 5) likelihood of having to take emergency actions.

Current Assessment
Adequacy assessments will be made on an annual basis for the power supply 5 years into the future. The analysis assumes existing generating resources (and those that are expected to be operational within 5 years), expected efficiency gains based on the Council’s power plan and some amount of market supply. The last official assessment was done in 2010 for the 2015 operating year and is documented in the Council’s 6th power plan. That assessment concluded that the regional supply was adequate through the next 5 years. The analysis also showed, however, that summer supplies were not growing as rapidly as demand, indicating that summer months are likely going to be the critical months for resource planning. The next official assessment will be completed by summer of 2012 for the 2017 operating year.

We encourage your participation in this process. If you wish to add your name to our email lists, please email your request to John Fazio  (jfazio@nwcouncil.org).