
The Council is developing the next Northwest Power Plan to ensure an adequate, efficient, economical, and reliable power supply for the region.
The Council is developing its next power plan. Throughout the process, we’ll keep you informed on important milestones, the methods and analysis, and other work as it becomes available.
Scenario analysis
Scenario analysis is one way to account for uncertainty in the power planning landscape by evaluating the potential impacts of changing key assumptions. The Ninth Plan will have two priority scenarios with a range of sensitivities to be explored:
- New Resource and Transmission Risk (and video, Feb 2025)
Broad scenario to explore uncertainty around resource availability, resource costs, and transmission availability - Hydro Operations Flexibility
Exploring the implication for resource needs with varying hydro operations impacting the flexibility of the hydro system (under development, expected later in 2025)
Methodology primers
These primers summarize planned methodologies for developing the Ninth Plan.
- Load Forecast (and video, Aug 2024)
The Council is required to develop a 20-year demand forecast as part of its plan. This presentation walks through the updated approach for the Ninth Plan. - New Resource Options – These presentations describe the Council’s approach to developing new resource options to be considered in the plan:
- Conservation (and video, July 2024)
- Demand Response (and video, Sep 2024)
- Distributed Solar (and video, Aug 2024)
- Generating Resources (and video, Aug 2024)
- Representing Markets in Council Modeling (and video, Oct 2024)
An overview of the current market options and the Ninth Plan will seek to represent any market decisions in its modeling.
News & updates
Feb 2025: Kickoff presentation (and video) on the Ninth Plan
Feb 2025: Provide comments on energy efficiency supply curves for the Ninth Plan
Ninth Plan elements and inputs
- Completed methodologies, forecasts, and other inputs
- Provide feedback on elements under development
More resources