When everyone works together and in the spirit of collaboration, good things happen. This was the case recently on the Boardman to Hemingway (B2H) transmission line project. B2H is a proposed 300-mile, high-voltage power line that will run between the Boardman area and Melba, Idaho.

Hours of collaborative discussion resulted in an important change to the B2H route that avoids or greatly minimizes additional impacts to the Navy training facility and irrigated agricultural land, including tree farms.

Numerous stakeholders recently signed a letter of support for the B2H route variation that runs along the west side of Bombing Range Road on the eastern edge of the Navy’s Weapons Systems Training Facility. The letter of support was submitted to the Navy in an application for an easement and to the Bureau of Land Management for its B2H National Environmental Policy Act permitting process.

The stakeholder group included the Oregon and Idaho governor’s energy offices, Morrow County, the Port of Morrow, the city of Boardman, Umatilla Electric Cooperative, Columbia Basin Electric Cooperative, PacifiCorp, Columbia-Snake River Irrigators Association, local landowners, Wheatridge Wind Energy, 2Morrow Energy, Ella Wind Development and Idaho Power.

It took much collaboration and several key compromises to make this route variation feasible. Everyone who signed the letter expressed their commitment to continue working together.

B2H will provide additional capacity for exchanging energy between the Northwest and the Intermountain West regions, depending on which region is experiencing the highest demand. The Northwest traditionally experiences high winter energy use, while the Intermountain West experiences high summer energy use due to irrigation and air conditioning load. By taking advantage of this diversity in seasonal peak demands, B2H will allow both regions to operate more efficiently and economically while also strengthening the regional power grid.

As Idaho Power works with its plant co-owners on its glide path to less coal-fired power generation, B2H becomes even more important. The company recently affirmed in its 2015 integrated resource plan, a long-term resource planning study, that B2H is essential to serving long-term customer demand. Previous plans also have identified the need for this transmission project, going back to 2006.

In the 2015 plan, the company’s preferred portfolio includes the potential retirement of its 50 percent interest in the North Valmy coal-fired plant in Nevada in 2025. The Boardman coal plant, in which Idaho Power owns a 10 percent share, will cease coal-fired operations in 2020. While B2H doesn’t take the place of these two plants, having a resource like it in place would help allow for acceleration of the early retirement of the North Valmy plant.

B2H will add to the entire region’s ability to economically purchase and deliver power for utility customers. B2H will also be a “no-carbon resource” because it is an alternative to constructing traditional carbon emitting generation resources. The project will move energy from where it’s generated to where it’s needed. The no-carbon nature of B2H may also assist Idaho and Oregon in meeting the new power-plant emission rules recently finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency. The line will use existing regional generation resources more efficiently.

Successful compromise and collaboration between diverse stakeholders — be it large or small — can be achieved. The recent letter of support for the West of Bombing Range Road B2H route variation demonstrates that. Idaho Power will continue to work with communities and landowners to site B2H and create solutions that lessen the project’s impacts.

You can always find updated information on the project at boardmantohemingway.com.

■

Mitch Colburn is the leader of Idaho Power’s 500-kV projects group.