By Hudson Sangree

UNION, Wash. — Sadness over the recent death of Robert Kahn suffused this year’s annual meeting of the Northwest & Intermountain Power Producers Coalition, where speakers remembered and praised the energy veteran.

Kahn, the longtime executive director of NIPPC, died in early August following a brief battle with cancer.

In addition to his policy expertise and advocacy, Kahn was known for organizing the trade group’s annual meeting at the Alderbrook Resort & Spa on Washington state’s Hood Canal, a natural fjord that’s part of Puget Sound.

In a lunchtime address, Elliot Mainzer, head of the Bonneville Power Administration, acknowledged the rain pouring outside the hotel conference room Sept. 9.

“I think it’s pretty appropriate the sky is shedding a few tears today for Bob,” Mainzer said as he began his remarks.

“Bob was a really good friend,” he said. “He was a guy who could take you to task and then join you for a beer. [He was] one of a kind. We’re going to miss him.”

A sign memorializing Kahn stood at the entrance to the meeting. It implored members to “Carry On!” — one of Kahn’s favorite expressions.

NIPPC’s lifetime achievement award was renamed for Kahn this year. Before he died, Kahn selected its recipient, Randy Hardy, a former BPA administrator and superintendent of Seattle City Light.

“I can think of no one more deserving,” Kahn had written.

Hardy introduced the meeting’s final presenter Sept. 10, Arne Olson of Energy and Environmental Economics.

“I felt his presence throughout this event, even in his absence,” Olson said. “I think that says a lot about the size of his personality, that he can still dominate this event; the event can still be Bob’s event, even after he’s gone. I think that personality will really be missed in the region.”

Olson said Kahn used his standing in energy circles to be “a thorn in the side of the utilities, a persistent advocate for competition and a breath of fresh air from the outside in an industry that, from my perspective, really, really needs that.”

Regional Markets

As in prior years, much of the discussion at this year’s NIPPC meeting revolved around participation in Western regional markets. (See Northwest Ponders RTO with Mix of Hope and Skepticism.)

As part of a carbon policy panel, Glenn Blackmon, with the Washington State Energy Office, noted his state recently passed a bill mandating electric utilities to rely on renewable and carbon-free energy sources by 2045. California passed a similar bill last year.

The measure, SB 5116, is far more detailed than California’s landmark SB 100 but still requires policymakers to tackle thorny problems, he said.

“One of those areas is figuring out how to make our clean electricity policy work with the regional markets,” Blackmon said. “We want to make sure that our utilities and other power suppliers are able to participate [and] get the benefits of organized markets. But we also want to make sure we meet the clean electricity objectives of our statute.

“We’d like to see the markets develop in a way that if you want to trade clean … you’re able to do that,” he said.

CAISO’s Western Energy Imbalance Market and SPP’s new Western Energy Imbalance Service (WEIS) are generally seen as a way to buy and sell clean energy across the Western Interconnection. Concerns linger, however, about the uneasy alliance between the coal-burning states of the interior West and coastal states seeking to go all-green. (See Patchwork of Carbon Policies Troubles Western EIM.)

Both markets continue to sign up new customers, though the EIM remains far larger than its nascent challenger at SPP. (See WAPA, Basin, Tri-State Sign up with SPP EIS.)

“It looks like there is going to be meaningful competition for market platforms in the West, which I think is a good thing,” Steve Wellner, FERC’s director of Western regulation, said at the NIPPC meeting.

If BPA joins the EIM, as it hopes to do by 2022, it would bring an area of the Pacific Northwest the size of France into CAISO’s interstate wholesale trading market. In June, BPA kicked off a monthlong public comment process in hopes of signing an implementation agreement with the EIM this month. (See Customers Probe BPA on EIM Impact.)

“We got 100% support for signing that agreement,” Mainzer told the NIPPC audience.

CAISO is evaluating adding an extended day-ahead market (EDAM) to the real-time EIM to increase its usefulness as a regional marketplace, and the BPA administrator said he believes the EDAM is needed to help move BPA’s hydropower and other renewable resources across the West.

“It’s not going be enough to sell all this stuff on a five-minute market,” Mainzer said.