Sierra Club Questions Proposed Redundant Tranmission Line
Download: Public Hearing Talking Points and Sierra Club Analysis.
Since Ronald Reagan was first elected president through today, the existing Hailey-Ketchum power line has reliably serviced the area 99.999 percent of the time, causing only 3.3 hours of unplanned outages over the past 36 years. Idaho Power’s own contractor characterizes this operating history as “practically unsurpassable.”
Idaho Power has continued to push for a redundant Hailey-Ketchum transmission line since 1973. The company’s recent community consulting group operated under the provided assumption that “reliable power” required a goal of implementing “redundant transmission facilities throughout the Wood River Valley.”
The redundant transmission line would add $30-plus million to Idaho Power’s asset base, earning returns for its shareholders and financially benefiting the company.
Blaine County Planning and Zoning commissioners have denied Idaho Power the permits needed to move forward with the project. This summer, the Blaine County commissioners will make a decision on Idaho Power’s appeal to overturn the P&Z’s decision.
In a separate process, Idaho Power is requesting that the Idaho Public Utilities Commission issue a certificate of public convenience and necessity for the line, which if granted would green light the project to move forward regardless of decisions by local government.
The city of Ketchum has repeatedly requested that Idaho Power conduct a more comprehensive analysis of alternatives.
On May 5, PUC staff filed testimony in the docket for the certificate of public convenience and necessity, concluding, “There is no compelling case for redundancy.” Equally significant, they recommended that if state regulators deem the line necessary, local “cities/counties” should be required to foot the cost of undergrounding the line, which PUC staff estimated at $11.5 million.
Given the existing line’s exceptional history of reliability, a newly rebuilt line along the existing right of way (replacing today’s wooden poles with stronger steel poles) could provide the same reliability or better.
Before we commit to spending $30 million on an asset that would have been used only a handful of hours over the past four decades, Idaho Power needs to consider opportunities to pair a rebuilt line with various combinations of distributed energy resources.
Idaho Power did perform a flawed and cursory analysis of distributed energy alternatives based on an inappropriate set of assumptions. To date, it has not conducted a full and fair analysis of the benefits of a rebuilt line complemented by some local generation and storage capabilities.
Unlike local generation and storage alternatives, a second line would not provide an independent source of power. A second line would have done nothing to mitigate the infamous Dec. 24, 2009, outage that left the Wood River Valley without power for 12 hours. And while meteorological data suggest that the 90-plus mph winds that caused Jackson’s outage this winter are conditions that the existing Hailey-Ketchum line is not exposed to, distributed energy resources can provide emergency power and other grid services in a variety of situations.
While the Sierra Club is not proposing wholesale distribution of Tesla Powerwalls as the right solution, nearly 3,000 residents could be supplied with a battery backup system for half the cost of the proposed second line.
Before either the Blaine County or Public Utilities commissioners give the green light for the redundant line, it’s in everyone’s interest to make sure all the relevant alternatives are fully and fairly evaluated. There is a far-reaching transformation under way in the electricity industry, and Sierra Club wants to make sure that we make the right long-term investments as we decarbonize and move toward the clean and distributed energy grid of the future.
