BPA Brings More Wind Generation Into The Northwest Power Grid
Wind farms are generally in remote locations. BPA's role is to meld the power into the regional power system and deliver it to utility service areas.
The agency is preparing to interconnect 75 megawatts of new wind power from Klondike II, located just outside Wasco, Ore., in Sherman County. The facility has 50 new wind turbines. PPM Energy (PPM) is the developer of the project and Portland General Electric (PGE) will be purchasing all of the output from Klondike II beginning in December.
In the first phase of the Klondike project BPA connected 24 megawatts of wind generation into the transmission system. With this second project almost complete, wind turbines from both projects will produce up to 100 megawatts of combined power interconnected by BPA, which is 10 percent of the output from Bonneville Dam.
In 2002, Wasco Electric Coop built a new 115kV line from BPA's DeMoss Substation to the wind farm and BPA made upgrades at the substation. All of the power from the project is then carried to the BPA system.
"The 2002 upgrades minimized the amount of work that had to be done this year," said BPA project manager Margaret Albright. "This and the effective use of field and construction crews allowed us to complete the project ahead of schedule."
In addition to the interconnection, new communications equipment has been installed and is carrying operational traffic. This allows BPA dispatchers to monitor the wind farm and maintain system reliability.
Klondike II will be the sixth wind interconnection by BPA to the transmission system since 1998 for over 300 megawatts combined peak output.. BPA has two more wind projects scheduled to interconnect in 2005 and ten other requests from wind developers that plan to interconnect to the system by 2007.
SOURCE: Bonneville Power Administration