Oregon PUC Declines to Support PGE's Proposed Wind Resource

Last Tuesday, the OPUC Commissioners held a regularly scheduled hearing. The main topic was Portland General Electric's (PGE) proposed acquisition of 175 aMW of wind. At the hearing, which I attended, renewable and environmental advocates were out in force. Dozens of citizens showed up wearing read t-shirts, some with 350.org, others from the Sierra Club. Others wore the color red in solidarity.

Commissioner Bloom, the lone Republican on the three-member Commission, read prepared remarks that were extraordinary, being delivered from the Dias. He chastised PGE for an op-ed in the Oregonian the prior Friday in which the Company's head honchos essentially pleded with the public to come to help support their proposed acquisition before the Commission. I've seen the Commissioners take witnesses to task. What I hadn't seen was a thorough admonishment of a utility at the beginning of a hearing, reading from prepared remarks.

Customer groups had filed testimony opposing PGE's request for "acknowledgement" by the Commission.

As I suspected would happen, the Commissions declined to acknowledge PGE's proposed acquisition of 175 aMW of wind ahead of need. The fact that the Company had no need for the acquisition until about 2029 essentially sealed its fate. While PGE will need new capacity, more wind in the Columbia River Gorge wouldn't make much of a dent in that need.

Acknowledgement is a formal step that is a "thumbs up" to what a utility has proposed in its IRP Action Plan. While acknowledgement doesn't guarantee rate recovery when the utility eventually files for cost recovery, it helps support such a filing. Of course, the utility can choose to build the plant. If it does so, it understands that the odds of rate recovery are slim.

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