Council preparing to officially commence working on Ninth Northwest Power Plan in February

Developing a plan that will ensure the Pacific Northwest continues to enjoy a power system that is adequate, efficient, economical, and reliable is a time-intensive, collaborative, transparent, and public process. The Council and Power Division staff will spend much of the next two years working on this plan. The Council intends to have a draft ready for review by the public in mid-2026 and adopt a final version by the end of the year.

Power Division staff have been preparing for this work and analysis. In February, staff will officially commence review of the plan, so many early decisions on findings will be set for the upcoming planning. Power plans have 20-year time spans but are reviewed and updated on roughly five-year cycles.

The early preparation has included meeting with advisory committees, upgrading computer modeling, working with the region to improve the Council’s resource adequacy standards for the Northwest power system, doing initial load forecasting, assembling supply curves to gauge the future costs and availability of energy efficiency, determining parameters for the Ninth Plan’s analysis, and several other areas of work.

The Power Act requires that the Council put out a call for recommendations for amending its Fish & Wildlife Program before a new Power Plan can be developed. The Council issued this call on January 17. The Council develops a program to protect, mitigate, and enhance fish and wildlife impacted by the hydropower system in the Columbia River Basin. The public has until April 17 to submit recommendations on how to update and amend the program. The Council aims to adopt the new, updated Fish & Wildlife Program in April 2026.

At January’s meeting, Power Director Jennifer Light and General Counsel John Shurts provided the Council with a roadmap to the upcoming process to developing the Ninth Northwest Power Plan and the major steps required by the Northwest Power Act (see presentation and video).

The power plan’s primary legal tie is with Bonneville Power Administration, which is the largest energy provider in the Pacific Northwest. Under the Northwest Power Act, BPA must acquire resources consistent with the Council’s power plans. For utilities, other energy providers, regulators, and other regional stakeholders, the power plan provides regional-level insights on demand forecasts and cost-effective strategies to meet those needs over short- and long-term planning horizons.

Here are some of the major steps coming up (dates are estimates and subject to change):

• In February, staff will scope out the key priorities for scenario modeling around resource and transmission risk, and to develop a fuels price forecast that can inform modeling.
• In March-April 2025, Power Division staff will produce a new 20-year forecast for the Pacific Northwest projecting load across all sectors. Electric vehicles, data centers and chip fabrication facilities, and meeting clean energy policies are expected to be significant factors in future power demand.
• In addition to load forecasting, from February-June 2025 staff will be working with the Council and the region to determine generating resource options, and demand side resource options like demand response and energy efficiency.
  • By June, staff intends to model a build out of west-wide resources to inform market dynamics.
• From June 2025 to April 2026, staff will be working with the Council and the region on scenario modeling including assessing needs, testing resource strategies, and developing strategy and recommendations.
  • By August-September of 2025, staff will produce a needs assessment based on existing system assumptions and demand forecast trajectories.
  • During this period, Power Division staff will be working closely with the Fish and Wildlife Division to understand F&W Program recommendations and analyze potential hydro operations changes relevant for both power planning and the program amendment process.
  • Staff will conduct multiple runs to capture uncertainty through scenario modeling to inform range of cost-effective resources and reserves across those scenarios.
• From April 2026 to July 2026, the Council and staff will be assembling the draft power plan, so they can have a draft ready for public review and comment by July 2026. This will open a two-month public comment period.
• The Council aims to adopt the Ninth Power Plan by the end of 2026.

This process will coincide with other ongoing regional transmission planning processes for the Northwest power system, including the Western Transmission Expansion Coalition’s study. WestTEC is an industry-led initiative that convenes states, BPA, utilities, tribes, public interest groups, energy providers, and transmission companies, among others. Over the next two years, it will produce a study looking out over 10- and 20-year time periods, which can provide project-level analysis and other information that can inform the Ninth Power Plan.

Additionally, Power Division staff will be collaborating with BPA staff as they work on developing the agency’s Resource Program 2026, which is intended to be completed by September 2026. A possible outcome of that process would be BPA acquiring major new energy resources beyond efficiency for the first time in decades.

The Council has chartered eight advisory committees that will help inform upcoming power planning processes: Climate & Weather; Conservation; Demand Forecasting; Demand Response; Generating Resources; Fuels; Resource Adequacy; and System Analysis. All meetings are open to the public, please check the Council’s website, newsletter, and social media channels for notices on upcoming meeting dates, times, and agendas.

Additionally, at the January meeting Power Division staff presented on:

• Existing decarbonization and clean energy goals and policies in the Pacific Northwest, across the Western Interconnection, and at the federal level that the Ninth Plan will account for. Meeting all of the Northwest’s goals and policies on their established timelines would mean the region would get approximately 80% of its electricity from clean energy resources by 2045. (Read presentation | watch video)
• Staff also presented on how to represent extreme weather data in modeling, capturing both multi-day events with extreme heat and cold in the Pacific Northwest (read presentation | watch video); and how to model operational risks from wildfires (read presentation | watch video)