The nonprofit federal administration that provides one-third of the Northwest’s electricity is preparing to part ways with its current Western energy market and sell its excess energy to companies and electric cooperatives as far away as Louisiana.
Bonneville Power Administration officials announced in a draft policy proposal released Wednesday that they intend to leave the California-controlled “real-time” market they’ve participated in since 2022 and join a new “day-ahead” energy market based out of Little Rock, Arkansas.
The move sparked concern and criticism from public utility commissioners and lawmakers in Oregon and Washington, as well as large investor-owned utilities in the region who say it will drive up rates for their millions of customers and cause grid reliability issues…