BPA’s Stimulus-Funded Wind Project Underway

The Bonneville Power Administration’s 79-mile McNary-John Day transmission line project will provide renewable wind energy to residences and businesses throughout the west. Contracts for line construction and conductors were awarded earlier this year, and roads and towers are already under construction.

The line will run from the McNary Substation in Oregon, across the Columbia River into Washington, and then return to Oregon to end at the John Day Substation.

Funded by $343 million in Recovery Act money, the project is expected to provide more than 575 MW of firm transmission service when it goes online in early 2012. The Energy Department anticipates that the project will generate between 100 and 200 jobs during the peak of construction. DOE also noted that construction materials were bought in the region.

BPA is a not-for-profit federal electric utility that operates a high-voltage transmission grid comprising more than 15,000 miles of lines and associated substations in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. It also markets more than a third of the electricity consumed in the Pacific Northwest. The power is produced at 31 federal dams and one nuclear plant in the Northwest and is sold to more than 140 Northwest utilities.

The utility is conducting environmental reviews under National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) guidelines for three more high-voltage transmission lines in the Northwest.

DOE news release