YAKIMA, Wash. — A cold, dry winter could leave the Northwest facing an electricity shortage because utilities are reluctant to invest in new power plants.
"There isn't economic incentive to build," said Roger Braden, general manager of Chelan County Public Utility District in Wenatchee.
"The bottom line is the marketplace will govern what is developed for resources--it takes into account the cost for energy and the difficulty of building those resources."
In an increasingly deregulated energy market, utilities see construction as a gamble.
With the exception of Pacific Klamath Energy's cogeneration project in Oregon, no power plants are under construction in the Northwest. About a dozen are planned, but construction is unlikely to begin until it becomes cost effective.
"This is mostly a wholesale issue. Instead of building generation and simply passing [the cost] through to customers . . . development of resources [is] now market-driven," Braden said.
"People don't build them if they won't pay. It used to be guaranteed recovery."
In December, the Northwest Power Planning Council warned of a nearly 1-in-4 chance that Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana could face a power deficit over the next four winters.
The report calls it a "reliability problem," which is loosely defined as a time when all the power demand for the region could not be met--even with buying electricity from outside sources.
It could be a huge shortage or a series of very small ones, depending in part on the severity and length of a dry, cold winter.
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"The size of this reliability problem is not the issue; the fact there is one is the issue," said John Harrison, a spokesman for the Portland, Ore.-based power planning council.
While widespread brownouts are possible, it is more likely the Western system would be unable to supply power in small units, he said.
The Northwest Power Planning Council is soliciting solutions now and preparing another installment on how to deal with any deficit.
Reducing the odds of shortages to an acceptable industry standard would require adding about 3,000 megawatts of capacity--roughly enough electricity for three cities the size of Seattle.
"That scares me," said Vic Parrish, chief executive officer at Energy Northwest, a 13-utility power consortium.
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Recent mild and wet winters may have made people complacent, but in a hydropower-dependent region such as the Northwest, that can quickly change.
