After years of debate, a decision on the fate of second transmission line in the northern Wood River Valley is in the hands of the Idaho Public Utilities Commission.
On July 26th, the Public Utility Commission held a public hearing in Ketchum, ID to collect public testimony on Idaho Power Company’s proposal to build a second transmission line connecting the Hailey and Ketchum substations. The Company argues that the $30 million plus project is needed to serve as backup in the event the existing line goes down.
But many others including the Sierra Club, City of Ketchum, PUC staff, and many Wood River Valley residents have questioned whether this is the right long-term investment for the community. An overflow crowd packed Ketchum City hall as citizens spoke overwhelmingly in opposition to the project.
“Our line has been 99.999 percent reliable over the last 36 years,” Aimme Christensen said. “We need to start thinking in 2017 terms, not 1973 terms. Everything is changing and it’s time for Idaho Power to admit that and come along with those changes.”
Mayor Nina Jonas stated, “The City is quite interested in this proceeding for the purpose of making sure the Company does not simply answer every energy question with a proposal to build more ‘sticks and wires,’ but instead conduct a true consideration of alternatives.”
While this proposal raises substantial issues related to land use and scenic values, Sierra Club chose to intervene in this regulatory proceeding because we think that a more robust consideration of alternatives is warranted before Idaho Power builds an expensive asset with a 70-80 year lifespan. In our testimony we explained that given the existing line’s exceptional history of reliability, we believe 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. We argued that before we invest $30 million customer dollars into an asset that would’ve only been used a handful of hours over the past 4 decades, Idaho Power needs to consider opportunities to pair a rebuilt line with various combinations and quantitie of distributed energy resources and local generation. While a second power line would have done nothing to prevent the infamous December 24, 2009 outage that left most of the NWRV in the dark for 12 hours or more, distributed energy resources can provide backup power in a variety of emergencies and numerous other grid services.
Utilizing non-wires solutions in the North Wood River Valley may also help facilitate the City of Ketchum’s ability to realize their clean energy objectives, which are in alignment with the Sierra Club’s efforts to promote the decarbonization of the electric sector.
In August the Blaine County Commission upheld the Planning and Zoning Commissions decision to deny Idaho Power the conditional use permits needed to move forward.
Now the fate of this project rests in the hands of the Idaho Public Utilities Commission. The Idaho Chapter Sierra Club was part of the hearingon August 8th at the Public Utilities Commission in Boise, Idaho arguing for better analysis before our commissioners. The Commission is expected to make a decision sometime late summer or early fall.