HomeMy WebLinkAbout20160823AVU to Staff 108.docAVISTA CORPORATION
RESPONSE TO REQUEST FOR INFORMATION
JURISDICTION: IDAHO DATE PREPARED: 08/15/2016
CASE NO: AVU-E-16-03 WITNESS: Bryan Cox
REQUESTER: IPUC RESPONDER: Jeff Schlect
TYPE: Production Request DEPARTMENT: Transmission Services
REQUEST NO.: Staff - 108 TELEPHONE: (509) 495-4851
REQUEST:
Please describe all joint-ownership and joint-operation agreements between the adjacent asset owners that impact the load served by the Company. Please provide copies of any proposed or existing agreements.
RESPONSE:
The Company only has a single, true “joint-ownership and joint-operation” agreement with respect to transmission facilities, namely the Colstrip Transmission Agreement. This Agreement provides for the joint ownership and delegated operation and maintenance of the Colstrip-Broadview-Townsend 500kV Transmission Lines between Avista, NorthWestern Energy, PacifiCorp, Portland General Electric and Puget Sound Energy, Inc. The parties to this agreement share ownership and capacity in these lines as tenants in common. With three minor exceptions, the Company retains all ownership, operation and maintenance responsibilities for all of its transmission assets both contractually and pursuant to applicable federal reliability standards. The Company does have a large number of interconnection and operation agreements with its neighboring transmission facility owners. The majority of these agreements include standard provisions governing the ownership, operation and maintenance of the parties’ respective interconnected facilities. A few agreements provide for capacity allocations or specific rights to schedule energy across the interconnected party’s facilities. The Company also has a number of interconnection and operating agreements with generation projects and load-serving electric utilities that are connected to the Company’s transmission system; these agreements do not impact load served by the Company and are not listed here.
With respect to the three minor exceptions noted above, these are three circuit breakers and related equipment (at Grant County PUD’s Wanapum 230kV Station, BPA’s Hatwai 500/230kV Substation and BPA’s Addy 230/115kV Substation) that are owned by the Company but are maintained by the party owning the station. The Company is actively pursuing arrangements to transfer ownership of these three circuit breakers and related equipment to the parties owning the stations to eliminate ongoing O&M expenses, capital replacement obligations and reliability standards compliance issues that arise from the Company owning transmission assets that are operated and maintained by another party.
The following table lists the Company’s agreements with adjacent transmission asset owners that can be generally considered to have an impact upon load served by the Company. Copies of these agreements are being provided in electronic format only due to the voluminous nature. While not having a direct impact upon load served by the Company the Company is also listing and providing copies of the ten interconnection and operating agreements with neighboring load-serving electric utilities.
Agreement Counterparty(ies) Notes
Colstrip Transmission Agreement NorthWestern Energy, Joint ownership
PacifiCorp,
Portland General Electric,
Puget Sound Energy, Inc.
Amps Line – Second Amended and Idaho Power Company Interconnection
Restated Interconnection Agreement NorthWestern Energy
PacifiCorp
Amps Line – Capacity Management Bonneville Power Administration Management of capacity rights
Procedures Agreement Idaho Power Company associated with the MT-to-NW
NorthWestern Energy cutplane
PacifiCorp
BPA – Hot Springs Interconnection Bonneville Power Administration Interconnection
Letter Agreement
BPA – Exchange Agreement Bonneville Power Administration Interconnection
BPA – WOH Letter Agreement Bonneville Power Administration Operations associated with the
West-of-Hatwai cutplane
BPA – BPATPUD Scheduling Bonneville Power Administration Specific scheduling practices
Agreement related to West-of-Hatwai
Operations
Chelan PUD – Interconnection Chelan County PUD Interconnection
Agreement
Grant PUD – Interconnection Grant County PUD Interconnection
Agreement
Grant PUD – Wanapum Grant County PUD Interconnection
Interconnection Agreement
Lolo-Walla Walla-Wanapum 230kV PacifiCorp Interconnection
Lolo-Walla Walla-Wanapum PacifiCorp Clarification of capacity rights
230kV MOU
Pend Oreille – Interconnection Pend Oreille Interconnection
Agreement
Tri-Party Interconnection Idaho Power Company Interconnection
Agreement PacifiCorp
Idaho Power – 230kV Outage Idaho Power Company Operational practices during
Coordination specified outage conditions
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