Grid Mod: BPA minimizes outages and lowers costs

The Bonneville Power Administration goes to great lengths to keep the lights on in the Northwest. But to keep its 15,000 miles of transmission line and equipment in top condition, sometimes the agency has to do the one thing it usually tries to prevent: cut the power. 
 
By taking carefully selected segments of the grid offline, crews can safely perform critical maintenance and upgrades on equipment that would otherwise be charged with up to 500,000 volts. The power and cost impacts of these outages can add up, considering BPA plans hundreds of individual transmission projects each year on a network of lines that, if laid end to end, would stretch halfway around the globe. 
 
But now, under a new program called One BPA Outage, the agency is reducing the number of outages it takes to complete all of this work, saving ratepayers money in the process. 
 
This new, carefully-synchronized program also provides more certainty that an outage will take place as scheduled, reducing the amount of rework that’s required when an outage is canceled at the last minute.
 
Moreover, the process coordinates transmission outages with work at hydropower projects to maximize power generation and minimize impacts to migrating fish. 
 
Coordinating Maupin Substation work saves millions 
 
Electrical engineer Curtis Michael manages BPA’s System Protection and Controls program. SPC refers to the indoor portion of substations – the wires and switches inside control houses. In 2016, from his office in Vancouver, Washington, Michael began planning an SPC upgrade at BPA’s Maupin Substation, located in central Oregon. The equipment was outdated and needed replacing. Like all of his SPC projects, Michael began planning the upgrade about two years before the work and associated outage would take place. 
 
As a 15-year BPA veteran with experience in many different Transmission roles, Michael says he had a fairly comprehensive understanding of BPA’s operations. That is, until the One BPA Outage project shed light on some inefficiencies. “Turns out, there was a lot that I didn’t know,” says Michael. 
 
As he later learned, he wasn’t the only one scheduling a project at Maupin. Another program manager was planning to upgrade the substation’s outdoor equipment – a project that needs about four to five years of lead time. Other projects were in various stages of planning as well, including communication upgrades, line maintenance and tower projects in or near the Maupin Substation. All of the projects were on separate timelines, and each would require outages over multiple days.
 
That was typical of the past practice, where program managers – each one responsible for a single category of equipment – planned projects and their associated outages on a project-by-project basis, on a grid that spans 300,000 square miles. 
 
The One BPA Outage process put this inefficiency under a microscope and resolved it by getting all of the right players involved early on. 
 
“Getting the right people in the same room made all the difference. With a grid as large and complex as BPA’s, that’s more difficult than it sounds,” says Michael.
 
Under the new process, program managers coordinate and plan their work by geographic area. Hydropower and transmission system planners, as well as field staff and other subject matter experts are all involved. They get together regularly to develop a comprehensive view of all upcoming work and find the most efficient way to carry it out. This provides a greater understanding of the dependencies, sequencing and constraints for each outage.  
 
This is how Michael and more than two dozen other experts discovered the efficiencies they could gain by coordinating their Maupin Substation project plans. Not only did they synchronize their work, but with the construction experts in the room they were able to agree on a plan to make the most of a single outage. 
 
The project team decided on a technique called a “shoo-fly” – essentially a temporary transmission line that allowed the power to bypass the substation.
 
“This isn’t a tool we always use. But in this case, by constructing a detour for the power, the team could completely de-energize the substation and crews could work on the indoor and outdoor equipment at the same time,” says Scott Williams, a line foreman III in The Dalles. “The team completed the work in less time while maintaining system reliability, continuing to provide BPA customers with electricity, and protecting employee safety during the construction process.”
 
The results speak for themselves.
 
Using the integrated work plan instead of conducting individual projects, BPA took only four days of outages compared to 19; spent $8 million in materials and labor instead of $13 million; and completed the projects in 12 weeks of work instead of 34.
 
The One BPA Outage program also makes it more likely that a planned outage, typically scheduled years in advance, is carried out successfully. 
 
“The integrated work plan gets you part of the way there – but these outages are planned years in advance. A lot can happen before the actual outage takes place,” explains Kerry Erdenberger, One BPA Outage project manager.
 
For that reason, BPA has also established a governance process to continually monitor all of the variables that can impact an outage. This process helps the team identify and resolve outage conflicts or other unforeseen issues that could otherwise derail the project and ensures the issues are resolved. 
 
And then, starting six months before the scheduled date – much earlier than BPA’s previous practice – another team starts taking a deeper dive into the conditions that could pose an obstacle to the long-planned work. When the team identifies a potential roadblock, such as low streamflows or other local variables – they work together to adjust the plan if necessary and find the best solution.
 
That’s proving beneficial for hydropower generators and even the creatures that are impacted by the grid’s operations.
 
Well-timed transmission outages benefit power generation and fish
 
The Maupin project shows the benefits of coordinating multiple transmission projects. But BPA must also coordinate outages with the 31 federal hydropower dams connected to its grid.
 
When a line connected to a hydropower plant is de-energized, it constrains the dam – the plant can’t produce as much power because there’s no way to send it. Likewise, when a generator goes offline, it reduces the amount of power that’s available to be transmitted across the grid.
 
“In either case, we’re not fully using our equipment,” says Michael.
 
Through an ongoing effort between BPA’s Power and Transmission organizations, teams are finding even more opportunities to coordinate. The goal is to maximize the amount of work that can be done on generating units that are going to be offline anyway due to transmission work taking place.
 
This process is better for fish, as well. As fish biologist Scott Bettin explains, “When juvenile fish are migrating to the ocean, we spill water at each dam to optimize safe downstream passage. We are also required to run specific units to attract adult fish as they head upstream so they can find ladder entrances. A poorly timed transmission outage can lead to either too many or the wrong units offline, which can inhibit our ability to pass fish or even harm them if there is too much spill.”
 
In the new process, power generation and fish and wildlife impacts are considered upfront, rather than down the road after project plans are more defined. This prevents BPA from scheduling outages that will only end up being rescheduled later, providing more certainty for everyone involved, including BPA’s neighboring transmission operators.
 
The One BPA Outage project is one of several grid modernization projects that support the implementation of BPA’s strategic goals to modernize federal power and transmission system operations and supporting technology, and to provide competitive power and transmission products and services. To learn more about the portfolio of projects and all that is happening with grid modernization, click here.