Articles by Peter Jensen

At January’s meeting, Power Director Jennifer Light and General Counsel John Shurts provided the Council with a roadmap to the upcoming process to developing the Ninth Northwest Power Plan and the major steps required by the Northwest Power Act.

Power Division staff are currently working on an updated load forecast for the Northwest power system – including data centers, chip fabrication facilities, and the tech sector – and expect to have it ready by spring 2025. At its December meeting, the Council convened a panel of experts to discuss the energy needs of data centers, including what potential they may or may not have to be efficient and flexible.

Power Division Director Jennifer Light recently sat down with Olympia-based public affairs network TVW to discuss the Council’s role in regional power planning as Washington state navigates decarbonization changes while ensuring the Pacific Northwest’s power system stays adequate, efficient, economical, and reliable. The episode is now airing.

The Tucannon River – a tributary of the Snake River flowing out of the Blue Mountains – sustains the only remaining population of spring Chinook in the lower Snake, which was listed as threatened under the ESA in 1992.

During the Council’s November meeting, representatives from Bonneville Power Administration reported making progress on acquiring target amounts of cost-effective energy efficiency by 2027.

During its November meeting in Portland, the Council heard briefings on new regional, West-wide, and national planning efforts underway that aim to get new transmission line projects built faster and help states and utilities meet upcoming clean energy goals in the 2030s and 2040s.

At its October meeting in Portland, the Council heard a primer on what climate change data staff will use to help develop the Ninth Power Plan and reviewed recent trends in the data.

As load forecasts show significant growth in the next five years due to electric vehicles, data centers, and the tech sector in the Pacific Northwest, new data shows key progress on a critical solution: acquiring cost-effective energy efficiency.

For the second time in 2024, the Pacific Northwest has set a new record for peak seasonal power demand. A heatwave that hit the region in early July sent demand on the grid surging to 33,300 MW, which is slightly higher than the previous summer peak of 33,000 MW set during the June 2021 heat dome. In a cold snap that hit in January 2024, the Northwest set the record for winter peak demand at 35,500 MW.

While producing the 2021 Power Plan, Council power system analysts kept bumping up against limitations to their old computer models’ ability to do long-term load forecasting among other essential tasks in power planning. To address this issue, in 2023 staff contracted with Itron, a company offering energy forecasting software tools, to upgrade the Council’s long-term load forecasting.