The Bonneville Power Administration and its customers are implementing a settlement that will set the stage for clearing interconnection queue backlogs and study delays and accelerate the work to address the challenges the region is facing with decarbonization and the buildout of renewable energy resources, it said earlier this month.
“BPA heard our customers loud and clear and understood the urgency with which we had to act to improve our interconnection process,” said Richard Shaheen, senior vice president of Transmission Services. “Customers agreed to a set of terms and conditions that will significantly improve the way we process and study interconnection requests.”
Transmission owners across the country have seen the volume of interconnection requests in their queues increase dramatically over the past five years, leading to study delays and backlogs.
“Collaborating with customers and constituents to solve problems and develop better processes is a key underpinning of our tariff process,” said Michelle Manary, vice president of Transmission Sales and Marketing. “We appreciate the work our customers did with us that helped us implement these reforms.”
Under the previous process, BPA used a first-come, first-served serial study process. The requests were studied individually in the order they were received.
In this serial process, customers often withdrew their requests which further exacerbated the issue of study delays.
BPA’s reforms are implementing a first-ready, first-served cluster study process which helps BPA more efficiently allocate resources to manage the study process, address the backlog of requests and mitigate study delays.
These reforms were developed with customers and regional stakeholders through a collaborative process, resulting in a settlement agreement adopted earlier this year. The changes are captured in BPA’s modified tariff, which became effective on June 30.
To address interconnection requests currently in the interconnection queue, BPA has developed a transition process.
Under this process, customers that meet requirements may apply for interconnection requests to continue to be studied under the serial process. If customers do not meet the requirements to remain in the serial process, they can request to be included in a transition cluster study.
Customers may submit requests for inclusion in the transition process by Sept. 28, 2024.
For additional information, visit BPA’s Generator Interconnection Queue Reform page.
