ColumbiaGrid is addressing key issues for the region’s electricity transmission customers.

The nonprofit formally incorporated in Washington state in April 2006 elected a three-person board of directors in August. After six months, the group is well on its way to creating formal agreements that address key issues such as increasing transmission capacity, improving efficiency and reliability and streamlining the purchasing process for electric transmission customers.

“We feel there are problems on the Northwest transmission grid that could, if not solved, adversely affect the reliability of our system and adversely affect our ability to buy and sell energy on the wholesale market, which is very important to our utility,” said Steve Fisher, power manager for Chelan Public Utilities District (PUD). “We feel that getting involved with ColumbiaGrid we will be able to have an effect on some of the more disturbing trends that we see.”

By addressing the region’s transmission issues, ColumbiaGrid could ultimately help utilities that rely on the wholesale market to do more business with each other, Fisher added.

ColumbiaGrid’s founding members are Seattle City Light, Tacoma Power, Puget Sound Energy (NYSE: PSD) , the Chelan and Grant County Public Utility Districts, Avista Corp. (NYSE: AVA) and Bonneville Power Administration (BPA). Other Northwest control area operators responsible for their interconnected systems are invited to join.

The board, comprised of Ed Sienkiewicz, former BPA vice president, Lloyd Meyers, retired Avista Energy executive, and Shelly Richardson, an energy lawyer, is currently in the process of hiring a president and staff to keep it on target.

According to Hugh Imhof, spokesman for Avista Corp., the Federal Energy and Regulatory Commission (FERC) initially wanted regional transmission organizations all around the country.

“They started working on what they called RTO West and that eventually became Grid West, and now we’re up to ColumbiaGrid," Imhof said. "It just keeps evolving. What it really is, is a way to govern the use of the grid in the future and to make sure that planning is done efficiently and adequately, and to make sure that all parties that use the grid are treated fairly.”

Kristi Wallis, a Seattle attorney and ColumbiaGrid’s chief spokeswoman, said the organization came about “as a result of a belief on the part of the participants that by coordinating the transmission facilities and approaching them as if they were owned by a single utility, that there would be benefits for the individual participants, but also for the whole region.”

Wallis described three principal goals for the organization: planning and expansion, reliability issues and developing one-stop shopping for electric transmission customers. Wallis noted transmission customers currently access large transmission owners through a computer interface called OASIS (Online Access Same-time Information System).

“If a transmission customer wants to transmit power across multiple systems, they need to go to a number of different places to see what’s available and to make arrangements to get the transmission service.”

ColumbiaGrid is planning to create a centralized ColumbiaGrid OASIS, she added.

Paul Munz, senior analyst for Seattle City Light, said the first action taken on behalf of the members will be to finalize an Expansion and Planning Functional Agreement. The agreement will be “sub-regional” while remaining under the umbrella planning framework of the Western Electricity Coordinating Council and coordinated with the Northwest Power Pool and BPA, he said.

“That agreement is quite detailed,” Munz said. “It basically lays out the whole establishment of the different types of planning that would be considered when you have requests for capacity addition or improvements on a bilateral basis or a multiparty basis, and how the interaction and the planning evaluation and analysis will be carried out.”

He added the agreement would also address “the big issue,” which is the allocation of costs for building out the transmission system among the grid owners.

Next, the group plans to draft an agreement addressing reliability issues. According to Munz, the agreement would build upon work already being done by BPA and Northwest Power Pool.

ColumbiaGrid is also working on what Munz called a “backstop mechanism” for expansion and planning, “which would be really rolling back to FERC.”

For example, ColumbiaGrid could propose $20 million for transmission upgrades in the Puget Sound area in which Puget Sound Energy was allocated a cost of $12 million, Seattle City Light was allocated a cost of $6 million and Snohomish PUD was allocated a cost of $2 million.

“If Seattle City Light started balking at the idea of paying $6 million, the backstop would be the ultimate dispute mechanism,” Munz said. “We would have shorter-term manners that we would work on in ColumbiaGrid or in the agreement, but if ultimately a party just really stuck its foot in the ground … the issue could be taken back to FERC.”

ColumbiaGrid's bylaws, monthly meeting agendas and minutes, and additional materials relating to ColumbiaGrid's development process, are posted at www.columbiagrid.org.