NWHA Fall Regional Workshop | September 25-26 PacifiCorp Headquarters 825 NE Multnomah, Suite 700, Portland, Oregon 97232
This year’s Fall Workshop will focus on bringing value & reducing the overall busbar costs of PNW hydro operations. It’s an opportunity to learn what energy market pressures currently are in conjunction with the factors that drive hydro busbar costs. Sessions will also include examples and collaboration with hydro peers on doing more with less. The session will conclude with a round table on future cost drivers and what are alternatives if it’s simply too costly.
Thursday, September 25th
8:30 AM – 12:30 PM PGE Sullivan Project Tour – Visit Portland General Electric’s hydro project at Willamette Falls.
1:00 – 1:30 PM Welcome Remarks & Hydro Cost Context The opening session will provide an overview of hydro cost relative to other competing resources.
Brent Denham, Principal Project Manager/Engineer, PacifiCorp
1:30 – 2:30 PM Energy Imbalance Market: Transparency in Practice An overview of the Energy Imbalance Market (EIM) will be provided, followed by examples of how bidding and trading occurs. This session provides transparency to the cost of energy.
Paul Wood, Director, Portfolio Optimization, PacifiCorp
2:30-2:45 PM Networking Break
2:45 – 3:15 PM Roundtable: What’s Driving Your Plant Costs? (Busbar Roundtable Discussion) The benefits of Hydro resources are well known, but what are the economic costs of hydropower facilities? To compare the cost of different generation resources, the Busbar cost is often used. This levelized cost, or “busbar cost indicates the average cost per unit of electricity generated at the actual plant ($/MWh), allowing for the recovery of all costs over the lifetime of the plant. This is done by factoring in the annual cost contributions of: plant investment, depreciation, taxes, fuels, operations & maintenance. In this session, the panel will discuss what the key factors are driving hydro plant costs.
3:15-4:00
Decision Support System- Optimization Modeling Avista Decision Support System (ADSS) is being used in several operational and planning areas for decision-making at Avista. ADSS achieves modeling detail down to the generation unit level at high rates of computational speed, supporting: Optimized scheduling of generation outage timing for maintenance, Hourly energy scheduling and unit dispatch decisions, Energy Imbalance Market support, Relicensing, plant upgrades, new plant design, RFPs, and IRPs. Learn about this tool available to all hydropower utilities.
Clint Kalich, Energy Resource Planning, Avista Corporation
5:30 – 8:00 PM Dinner & Social at Punch Bowl Social – Bowling, pool, karaoke and networking
Friday, September 26
9:00 – 9:30 AM Coffee & Bagels
9:30-10:30 AM Electronic Data Logging of Reports and Operator Data Capturing, analyzing, and archiving Dam Safety Surveillance & Monitoring data (DSSM). Lessons learned since the implementation five years ago. What works well, and what could be done now with emerging commercial products?
Mike Mortenson, Dam Safety Program Manager and Brent Sullivan, Dam Safety Officer, PacifiCorp
10:30-11:00 AM Networking Break
11:00 – 12:00 PM DOE Grants: Making Marginal Plants Green Again Legacy hydropower assets can benefit from grants administered by the U.S. Department of Energy. This session will focus on successful applications and how this critical funding can provide a boost to marginally economic projects.
Tom Hickey, Director of Engineering & Brock Boen, Sr. Engineer, PacifiCorp
12:00 – 1:00 PM Lunch
1:00 – 1:45 PM
Group Discussion: Costs, Benefits, and the Future of Cost Drivers- Group Discussion Group discussion on emerging environmental, dam safety and construction regulations that are projected to affect Hydro. The session will also provide for participants to collaborate on how they are addressing regulatory and sourcing risks. Moderators: Todd Olson Director of Hydro Compliance & Enrique Ochoa, Senior Engineer/PM, PacifiCorp
1:45 - 2:00 PM Networking Break
2:00- 2:45 PM Navigating Change: Options and Risks Addressing Extreme Costs of Agin Hydropower Facilities What are your options when faced with a hydroelectric project that is no longer economical? This session will explore alternatives including operational changes, co-locating generation, divestiture, and decommissioning. Using experience from recent decommissioning actions in the Northwest (e.g., Elwha, Condit, Klamath, and others) we will discuss our understanding of the options in terms of process, risk, cost, and schedules.
Demian Ebert, Senior Project Manager, McMillen
2:45-3:00 PM Closing Comments