Bonneville Power Administration: A Primer

Hydroelectric power is a major energy resource in the Pacific Northwest. But how big is it exactly, how is it produced, and how does it affect Oregonians?

As of 2021, 28 percent of the Pacific Northwest’s electricity comes from hydroelectric power. In our region’s energy sector, Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) is associated with hydro power.

BPA is a federal government agency headquartered in Portland, with facilities across the Pacific Northwest. It is named for the Bonneville Dam, which was built in 1934, forty miles east of Portland in the Columbia River Gorge. BPA is responsible for selling the output of the federal hydro system and managing the backbone of the Northwest’s regional transmission system.

BPA arose out of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal program, which facilitated the US’s recovery from the Great Depression. The New Deal funded many public works projects across the United States. Several large hydroelectric dams were built on the Columbia River to provide power to the Northwest. BPA’s founding law, passed in 1937, gave preference and priority for the use of electricity from public power plants to consumer-owned utilities. This means that while investor-owned utilities have access to federal hydropower on the open market, consumer-owned utilities have preference in receiving power from BPA. Check out this CUB Blog post for more information on the difference between investor-owned and consumer-owned utilities.

BPA is an independent federal agency tasked with selling the power from 31 federal hydroelectric projects in the Northwest, and one Washington nuclear power plant. BPA provides power at cost to consumer-owned utilities . In Oregon, major consumer-owned utilities such as Eugene Water and Electric Board, Hood River Electric Co-op, and Canby Utility get much of their power from BPA.

The federal hydro dams are a cheap source of energy for the region. However, they also present several cultural and environmental concerns. The Columbia River dams flooded and destroyed important Native American cultural sites in the Columbia drainage basin. For example, Celilo Falls was a major tribal fishing area on the Columbia. Construction of the Dalles Dam in 1952 created Lake Celilo, which flooded the falls and greatly damaged NW Native Americans’ fishing traditions and culture. The dam’s erection also floode d the neighboring Native villages of Wyam and Sk’in. The federal dams also act as a physical barrier to anadromous fish. BPA has spent billions of dollars on spilled water generation and fish passage equipment to better facilitate seasonal fish migration.

BPA has played a critical role in electrifying rural areas of the Northwest. BPA owns and operates a significant portion of the region’s power transmission system, including transmission lines in Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. These lines are large highways for energy, moving it from hydropower, coal, natural gas, wind, solar, and geothermal facilities. This vast network has enabled power to become widely available in the Northwestern United States.

In 1980, Congress passed the Pacific Northwest Electric Power Planning and Conservation Act (The NW Power Act) which provided new direction for BPA and created the Northwest Power and Conservation Council. At the time, the region’s excess supply of hydroelectricity was disappearing. Investor-owned utilities had to invest in new coal and nuclear plants, which raised their rates significantly. The difference between these companies’ rates and those of consumer-owned utilities grew, enough that many communities and the entire state of Oregon considered forming consumer-owned utilities to gain access to much cheaper BPA power. The NW Power Act created three major changes in how BPA operates. BPA was required to:

• Fund projects to protect, mitigate, and enhance fish and other wildlife of the Columbia River Basin, and related spawning grounds and habitat, that have been affected by hydropower.
• Acquire all cost-effective conservation before acquiring any additional generating resources. This was the beginning of the Pacific Northwest’s commitment to energy efficiency.
• Share the benefits of the federal hydro system with residential and small farm customers of investor-owned utilities, through a mechanism called the residential exchange.

The residential exchange, which shows up as a bill credit, is not BPA’s only benefit for investor-owned utility customers. BPA also manages several large generating units and provides regional energy capacity. Portland General Electric has used BPA hydropower to avoid needing to build natural gas power plants to meet Portland’s energy needs. And BPA has provided this service to other investor-owned utilities in the region, saving their customers millions of dollars.

BPA’s management of federal hydropower supplies consumer-owned utilities with affordable and clean electricity. But BPA’s role in the Pacific Northwest is larger. Its transmission and energy capacity roles benefit many customers of the region’s investor-owned utilities. Electricity from PacifiCorp’s and Portland General Electric’s wind and solar power plants flows to their customers on BPA’s transmission system. Additionally, its mandate to fund fish and wildlife programs is essential to compensate for the devastation that federal dams have inflicted on salmon and other aquatic species, and the Native American communities that historically have relied on Columbia River fish.

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