Despite triple-digit heat wave, BPA maintains safe and reliable operations

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Despite triple-digit heat wave, BPA maintains safe and reliable operations

July 31, 2024

As the first summer heat wave baked much of the Pacific Northwest in early July, the Bonneville Power Administration maintained safe operations and reliable service for its customers.

As triple-digit temperatures baked much of the Pacific Northwest in early July, the Bonneville Power Administration poised its bulk electric system to maintain safe operations and reliable service for its customers.

The first heat wave of the summer, which obliterated temperature recordsacross the Western United States, was predicted by BPA's Weather and Streamflow Forecasting team more than a week in advance of its arrival. Supervisory meteorologist Erik Pytlak says that a week's time is the norm for predicting heat, though BPA's meteorologists can sometimes see high temperatures developing in the region as early as 14 days in advance.

Weather forecasts help BPA prepare and position the federal hydropower and transmission systems for success during extended periods of high temperatures, much like what was experienced across the agency's multistate service territory July 3-9.

These data drive the processes of a number of teams within BPA, including Load Forecasting and Analysis and Short-Term Planning. According to Justin Rohrbough, a short-term load forecaster, his team uses the weather forecasts to help establish how much power BPA needs to generate to meet demand. Short-Term Planning, on the other hand, creates strategies to meet the demand.

Short-Term Planning conducts a number of different studies for multiple time horizons to assess generation inventory and to provide marketing direction to BPA's trading floor. The trading floor is responsible for purchasing power during times of need and selling surplus power when it is available.

Close coordination with Weather and Streamflow Forecasting through daily operations meetings alerts Short-Term Planning and BPA's trading floor to when there will be greater regionwide demand, such as during a heat wave.

"Our modeling and inventory guidance takes into consideration a substantial amount of data, including weather and streamflow forecasting, load forecasting, price forecasting, as well as operational constraints and outages" said Rob Hawkins, Short-Term Planning manager. "Loads and streamflow forecasts are hugely influential sources of uncertainty that we use as baselines to start modeling the planning horizon."

In the event of extreme weather, Hawkins says that his team turns to BPA's energy traders to understand the expected marketing conditions for the duration of the event. Short-Term Planning then conveys what energy and capacity is expected to be available from the Federal Columbia River Power System.

"This discussion will address multiple factors, including operational limitations - both near term and long term - operational risks associated with different marketing strategies, and the capability of the system to optimize generation into the peak of the event," said Hawkins. "Depending on the time of year and the prevailing operations, these considerations can become rather complex."

From there, Short-Term Planning coordinates extensively with FCRPS partners, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation, to push out non-urgent system maintenance. During the heat wave, reschedulable limiting outages or maintenance originally were successfully moved to maximize generation.

"Delaying project maintenance can be very involved, but during extreme events, one turbine of added capacity from a hydropower project can save BPA millions of dollars in energy purchases," explained Hawkins. By minimizing the amount of power procured during extreme events, BPA lowers costs, which in turn reduces power rates for preference customers.

Similar coordination takes place with Energy Northwest's Columbia Generating Station to ensure BPA has full access to more than 1,000 megawatts of nuclear generation.

"Sometimes the FCRPS has quite a bit of flexibility due to our advanced planning, and there isn't much that needs to be modified in order to get through an extreme event," said Hawkins. "Other times, there can be a number of levers we can use to create additional energy and capacity and really make a significant difference. Thankfully, the region stayed out of emergency territory during this heatwave."

The timing of the recent heat wave coincided nicely with upstream releases from Dworshak Dam, fueling additional energy production of projects on the lower Snake and Columbia rivers. The Corps plans upstream releases from Dworshak in the summer to support salmon returning to their natal streams. Normal operations at Grand Coulee also ensured generation was plentiful leading into the height of the heat wave.

Managing the hydraulics of the FCPRS, BPA's real-time hydro schedulers optimized hydropower generation during times of peak load to get the most value out of the system, working closely with real-time marketers who purchased energy during hours with less demand.

Connecting across business lines, Short-Term Planning also works closely with Transmission Services to gain insight into any localized needs of the transmission system that could impact the generation plan during an extreme event.

BPA's transmission system performed well during the first summer heat wave, despite heavy loading across the Western Interconnection. It is the result of intensive efforts by Transmission employees to prepare the grid for the warmest months.

"At its core, it starts with our standards that give us a great base system to operate," said Ricky Bustamante, vice president of Transmission System Operations. "We then benefit from important mitigation steps such as maintenance standards, vegetation management and access road work. Transmission Field Services also performs summer readiness maintenance that includes washing transformer cooling fins to help transformers cool more efficiently as they experience increased loading."

Under heat wave conditions, Bustamante says Transmission declares restricted maintenance operations, postponing planned outages to avoid unnecessarily restricting the transmission system's capacity. BPA switches to heat wave operations when the region's three largest load centers - Portland, Seattle and Spokane - average 78-plus degrees for three or more consecutive days.

"Throughout the heat wave, our dispatchers kept in close contact with Transmission Field Services so that as issues arose, they were quick to analyze the situation and respond to the threat with the best option available and/or restore equipment to service as soon as possible," said Bustamante.

On July 9, nearing the end of the heat wave, the BPA balancing authority area reached a record peak summer load of 9,365 megawatts. The previous record of 9,179 MW was set the previous day, July 8, with the record before that coming on Aug. 16, 2023, at 9,048 MW.

"I am very proud of all the coordination that takes place across the agency to make sure BPA is prepared for a heat wave," said Bustamante. "Across business lines, we all work hard, come together and stay aligned so lights, fans and air conditioning units don't turn off when people need them most."

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