Where Have All the Gen Farms Gone

Where Have All the Gen Farms Gone?

Aug 26 - Bulletin. Northwest Public Power Association

In the energy-starved winter of 2000-01, many Northwest public power utilities installed portable generator landscapes, referred to as "Gen Farms", to cover load gaps, keep up with demand, or simply increase generation capacity.

Chelan PUD, Clark Public Utilities, the Springfield Utility Board and Tacoma Power all installed portable generators that ran on either diesel or natural gas.

As reported in the March 2001 issue of the Bulletin, those utilities had done that work since the beginning of 2001.

Then

Chelan PUD (Wenatchee, Wash.) bought 21 portable Caterpillar diesel powered generators to spark a maximum of 35 megawatts for the utility's electric consumers. The utility said with an unusually low water year, customer electrical load at times might outstrip the available hydro resources. Operation of the diesel units would reduce the likelihood that the utility would need to buy power on the spot market to cover demand.

Clark Public Utilities (Vancouver, Wash.) leased 50 one-megawatt General Electric natural gas-fired generators to plug a hole in the utility's upcoming summer power supply.

The utility signed a one-year lease on the generating units at a cost of $19.5 million. Clark had a gap in power supply that it needed to cover because contracts with private generating companies were set to expire at the end of July and its then-new contract with Bonneville Power Administration did not go into effect until October 1.

At Springfield Utility Board, the utility installed 18 rented diesel generators that were to produce about 26 megawatts. The output was expected to be produced at about half the cost of power through a six-month period beginning in early April.

Chelan County PUD was one of several public utilities that installed portable generators in the energy-starved winter of 2000- 01.

Tacoma Power spent nearly $30 million over nine months of rental, fuel, installation, operation and maintenance of 30 1.6 megawatt Caterpillar diesel generators that operated at its Northeast substation. The city also bought 13 generators. The farm produced 48 megawatts, enough to serve 28,000 Tacoma Power customers.

Now

None of the above-listed utilities still have their portable generators. Clark Public Utilities put the portable generators in to cover for the energy crisis, and by the time the farm was online, the crisis was over. When the one year lease with General Electric was over, GE picked up the generators and shipped them away.

Tacoma sold 12 of the 13 generators they bought for $3.8 million to an outfit in Fargo, N.D. that intended to re-sell them to an electric cooperative in North Dakota, and the 30 Caterpillar generators they'd leased were returned to Cat.

Chelan PUD sold 24 diesel generators and the related equipment at auction by Ritchie Brothers in Olympia, Wash. The generators sold for $4,706,750. Of that amount, the PUD received its previously guaranteed minimum of $4,387,000.

Five buyers picked up the generators. A Caterpillar dealer bought 19, Douglas County PUD two, and one each were sold to Puget Sound Energy, Portland General Electric, and a Texas company.

Under an emergency one-year permit granted by the state Department of Ecology, the PUD was able to operate the diesels long enough to earn about $13.4 million in power sales before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission reversed itself and imposed a cap on power prices nationwide. Counting all the operating costs, revenues, value of equipment retained, site improvements and the final auction sale, the PUD's overall net expense was about $19.7 million.

Because more electricity is now available to the PUD from its Rock Island Dam second powerhouse, the diesel units were formally declared surplus by the PUD in 2003.

Nelson P. Holmberg is associate editor at Northwest Public Power Association. He can be reached by telephone at (360) 254-09 109 or by e-mail at nelson@nwppa.org .