April 2018 Bar Bulletin
By Sarah Dennison-Leonard
(First of Two Parts)
The region known as the Northwest Power Pool spans an area encompassing Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, portions of Montana, Wyoming, and northern California, and the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. This article describes how electric utility operators (known as “Balancing Authorities”) in the Northwest Power Pool area cooperate to manage system frequency, which helps them comply with regulatory standards more efficiently while reducing risk of compliance failures.
They built programs with well-thought-out strategies to harness diversity among the participants—diversity in system configuration, in power production resources, in geography, and in seasonal and daily operating conditions—to...