washington business
In Their Words
Steve Wright , the former administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration and head of the Chelan County Public Utility District , has been part of generating and distributing electricity across the Pacific Northwest for 40 years . Wright spoke with AWB ’ s Brian Mittge via Zoom from his home in East Wenatchee . He planned to cover many of these same topics , upon the invitation of former Gov . Chris Gregoire , in an address to the Cascadia Innovation Summit on Sept . 12 , speaking to the governors of Washington and Oregon , and the premiere of British Columbia .
You hosted AWB ’ s Manufacturing Week tour last autumn and arranged for our bus to drive across the Rocky Reach Dam . It was a great experience ! What do you wish people better understood about Washington ’ s hydroelectric system ?
How big it is , first of all , and how significant it is to the power supply . Seventy percent of the electricity in Washington state comes from hydro power . We have some of the lowest rates in the country , some of the highest reliability and some of the cleanest power . The carbon emissions per megawatt are substantially lower than the national average .
How does hydropower help with load-firming and integrating various forms of other electricity generation ?
A challenge with an electric power system is that we don ’ t have storage capability . So , for the most part , we have to generate in real time . When you flip a switch a generator someplace has to either turn faster or slower depending on which way you flip the switch and it has to happen basically within four seconds , in order to be able to keep the system reliable . But the problem is when you flip the switch it doesn ’ t make the wind blow harder or softer or the sun to burn brighter or lesser . Hydro has that capability , because you can put water behind a dam and then release it as you need it . Hydro is not only a carbon-free , low-cost resource . It ’ s also critical for the reliability of the system when you ’ re trying to add significant amounts of wind and solar .
You were BPA Administrator during the power crisis in 2000-2001 . What are your thoughts about our current power situation and how does it compare ?
I vividly remember public meetings with people who sat in front of us and said things like , “ My husband is about to lose his job and he ’ s the only breadwinner in this house . We don ’ t understand why this is happening .”
And our answer at that time was , “ We ’ re doing everything we can .” Which was true , and in fact I ’ m very proud of the work that we did during that timeframe to try to mitigate the harm of this supply /
Steve Wright
demand problem that became the longest electricity energy crisis in the history of the country . But I also knew that in the years leading up to that crisis that we held conferences on the fact that there was a reasonable chance that we had a supply / demand problem and that we needed to be doing more about it . And we didn ’ t fix it .
So as we look at the current situation , we are holding conferences that suggest that we have a resource adequacy problem with a fair amount of evidence that if we had a bad water year that we are at least a risk of recurrence of those same events . It ’ s a situation that cries out for action for us to do more .
What actions should we be taking right now so we don ’ t run into something like that again ?
We need to be increasing supply and reducing demand . The most critical thing that we need to do in the near-term is establish very clear resource adequacy standards that will identify the magnitude of the problem and , in particular where it lives . It will not solve the problem , because it doesn ’ t actually take the actions that increase supply and reduced demand , but it creates clarity around accountability , and I ’ m a big believer in that .
18 association of washington business