Utilities and lawmakers in the Northwest agree the Bonneville Power Administration’s next administrator must focus on building transmission and take risks to make that happen.

BPA is searching for its next leader after outgoing Administrator John Hairston announced he is leaving the agency to head up the Eugene Water & Electric Board. (See Hairston to Retire from BPA, Poised to Join EWEB.)

Whoever takes over would oversee an agency that controls about 75% of the Northwest’s high-voltage transmission system. And this system “faces serious challenges,” Melanie Coon, Puget Sound Energy’s spokesperson, told RTO Insider in an email.

“Years of underinvestment have left the aging system at full capacity, limiting its ability to handle power flows within the Northwest and to neighboring regions,” Coon said. “PSE believes the incoming BPA administrator must prioritize transmission development as a critical focus area and be open to innovative partnerships that can accelerate transmission development across the region.”

PSE was one of the signatories to a Feb. 18 letter that a group of investor-owned utilities sent to U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright. The other utilities include Avista Corp., Idaho Power, NorthWestern Energy, PacifiCorp and Portland General Electric.

The utilities said BPA’s mission is to ensure the Federal Columbia River Power System and Federal Columbia River Transmission System benefit all the agency’s customers, not just “select parts of the region or customers of any specific classification of electric utility.”

“For the region’s IOUs, BPA’s actions to carry out that mission have been deficient for some time, and BPA’s lack of transmission development in the region is the most visible example of this deficiency,” the letter stated.

A study by Energy and Environmental Economics predicts that accelerated load growth and aging power plant retirements will create a resource gap in the Northwest starting at about 1.3 GW in 2026 and expanding to almost 9 GW by 2030. That is approximately the load of the state of Oregon.

With the region facing “unprecedented load growth,” BPA needs a “bold leader” who prioritizes transmission investments, market structures that benefit all customers and is open to new public-private partnerships to speed up transmission development, the IOUs argued.

The IOUs noted that BPA has identified critical projects to help new resources and new large load developments come online. But without “the push of a new administrator, projects will linger without timely completion,” according to the letter.

John Haarlow, Snohomish County PUD’s CEO, echoed the IOUs’ concerns.

“What we’re hoping to see in the next administrator is someone who can move the agency from planning into action on transmission, generation and the infrastructure investments the Northwest requires to keep up with growing demand and pressing resource adequacy concerns,” Haarlow told RTO Insider.

Haarlow added that the next leader should be experienced in running a “complex organization” and be able to build relationships “across a diverse set of stakeholders, including utilities, tribes, states and Congress.”

Given BPA’s importance in the region, “It will take an innovative and results-oriented leader with a clear vision to lead across all of it,” he said.

A group of seven Republican lawmakers from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Nevada sent a separate letter to Wright on March 18. The lawmakers similarly contended the next administrator must “act much more quickly” on transmission.

Citing conversations with stakeholders, the lawmakers said the agency needs “A disrupter. A risk taker.” The agency needs someone with “the ability to recognize the need for new ideas and new approaches to long-standing problems facing the agency,” including transmission, the lawmakers argued.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) told RTO Insider in an email that the next administrator should strive to keep energy bills low “while also expanding responsible transmission that will allow increased renewable energy on the grid.”

‘Transmission, Transmission, Transmission’

Under Hairston, who assumed the role of administrator in January 2021, BPA has secured $773.8 million in transmission capital for 2025 with the goal of doubling transmission capital execution by 2028. It plans to issue awards to contractors that will cover a 10-year period with a maximum value of $25 billion to build and modify lines.

BPA also launched its $5 billion Grid Expansion and Reinforcement Portfolio (GERP) initiative in 2023 with the aim of building 23 new transmission lines and substation projects. (See BPA Provides More Details on $5B Tx Projects.)

Siobhan Doherty, Seattle City Light’s power supply officer, said the utility is happy BPA’s GERP initiative is moving forward. But “there’s still a lot of work to do in order to make transmission available for the region,” Doherty added.

BPA paused certain planning processes in 2025 to consider how to address nearly 61 GW of transmission service requests. The agency has presented proposals to reduce the queue and has held several stakeholder meetings on the issue. (See Northwest Lawmakers Explore Building Transmission Without BPA’s Help.)

SCL has advocated for BPA to make changes in its transmission tariff to build new lines faster and to make conditional transmission available earlier in the interconnection process, Doherty noted.

“We’ve seen multiple regional studies showing a need for resource adequacy, or that the region will not be resource adequate in the next five or 10 years,” Doherty said. “Since Bonneville is the backbone of the transmission system in the Northwest, we really think they need to focus a lot on moving transmission forward quickly.”

Transmission is not the only initiative on BPA’s agenda. For example, the agency is preparing to join SPP’s Markets+ day-ahead market. BPA also recently executed long-term wholesale electric power contracts with more than 130 public utility customers and is considering revising its rates following a court order to increase spills at eight dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers. (See BPA Releases Draft Decision Solidifying Markets+ Choice and BPA Explores Rate Alternatives Following Order to Increase Dam Spills.)

Still, “transmission, transmission, transmission,” former BPA Administrator Randy Hardy said. “Transmission construction and interconnection challenges dwarf everything else.”