This article was prepared for the local propublica reporting network in partnership with Public broadcasting of Oregon. Sign up for Shipment To get our stories in the mailbox every week.
Electric campaigns in Oregon and Washington are sent to terms to stop using electricity, generated coal, gas and other fuels that contribute to global warming. However, states are nowhere to achieve their goals, and dramatic consequences are already felt.
For example, during the winter storm in January 2024 in the northwest there was barely enough strength to satisfy the demand when the owners of the housing spin the electrical heaters, and the energy prices rose to more than $ 1000 per megawat, or 18 times higher than the usual price. The power lines were so overloaded that the network owners made an additional $ 100 million that sell access to the highest bidding participant.
Many utilities operated in emergencies during a thunderstorm, preparing for the turning off of electricity.
The thunderstorm “highlighted the turning point and demonstrated how close the region is, to the crisis of resources of adequacy,” the Western Pool of Energy wrote in the field of utilities in her assessment of the event.
Similar price spikes are one of the reasons for major utilities in Oregona pay 50% more than their electricity bills than they were in 2019. Last year, the number of utility customers disabled last year for not paying up to 70,000, the highest number of records.
Forecasters predict periods of extreme weather in the northwest, only in the future will bring more problems: the threat of overdue over the decade when the current trends in the region are ongoing.
Wind, sunny and other renewable sources are the only forms of power that can be added to solve the problem, thanks to the green energy of Oregon and Washington. But for the transfer of new energy sources in windy and sunny eastern parts of the region the best transmission lines to big cities west of Harry cascade are required.
Experts say the addition of transmission lines in the corridors that they currently lack would also allow utilities to continue flowing if ice storms or forest fires threaten other parts of the network.
The largest owner of these transmission lines, the federal administration of Bonnville, slowly spent on modernization – and slowly approve new green projects Until modernization is done.
Bonneville’s parental agency, the Energy Department, refused to make officials available for interviews, but Bonnville answered written questions.
“The potential for shutdown in the northwest Pacific is incredibly low,” the agency said. “The planners and network operators will continue to ensure reliability.”
Washington and Oregon’s legislators failed to turn to a narrow place in Bonneville when they approved the pure energy mandates in 2019 and 2021, according to PROPBLICA and OPB.
Res. Oregon Ken Helm, a Democrat Portland, who was sponsored by the 2021 legislation, said that failure to comply with the transfer line was not the only disadvantage in the legislation. He said that the bill did not provide accountability, without fines for when the utility did not reach certain terms of acquisition either solar or wind of energy. Hell said the Bill on the House of 2021 – “Law on Dead Leaves”.
“Senators and representatives, such as I, we cannot continue to believe in our own PR, that we have succeeded in promoting the future of renewable electricity,” said Halm, a member of the climate, energy and environment committee. “We do not head in this direction, and we will have to take action to change it or nothing will happen.”
Some legislators tried to play this year. Legislators in each state have drawn up plans for state bodies, which could fund improvements regardless of utilities and Boneville. These efforts have failed.
“Oregon should bring some leadership here desperately,” said Nikole Hughes, executive director of the Renewable North Group, which stands for the separation of the region from fossil fuel.
The situation with the northwest is expected to only deteriorate. The region’s electrical demand is predicted twice over the next 20 years, largely because data centers, Awarded by tax benefits Both in Oregon and Washington, run Increased use of power The region has not felt since the early 1980s.
Refusal of the Laws on Renewable Oregon and Washington will not help, sayBecause new fossil fuel plants will cost more payers than wind or solar. These plants will still have to fight transmission lines that do not take place for their strength.
Meanwhile, the region’s utilities say they would like to add 29,000 megawatts of power production over the next 10 years – an unprecedented supplement that will be approximately equivalent to the entire electricity that is currently consuming northwest at any time. Projects in their affairs list work completely from renewable energy.
However, utilities added only a little over half the power to their systems they planned last year. In fact, out of 469 projects that have been applied to Bonnville connection over the last decade, the only one who won the agency’s approval was in 2022. Green energy growth in 2024 came from projects that started looking for a connection with the Bonnville network by 2015 or connecting to a smaller transmission network that possesses private stubbornness.
If utilities still do not meet their goals, as in 2024, then the forecasts of Western electricity coordination believe that residents will spend almost a month under threat of Brownouts – the inability to include all chains at home – or dismissal.
“In the next few years, we can start making some tough elections regarding electricity,” Hughes said.
Hughes spent 20 years in renewable sources.
So far, she said, her family decided to buy a gas generator at a time when their home will lose power.
