OREANDA-NEWS. PacifiCorp will need to further explain its handling of a transmission service request after the Bonneville Power Administration accused the utility of giving its merchant affiliate preferential access to its transmission network.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) last week ordered a settlement hearing in response to a complaint from Bonneville about its ability to obtain transmission service to serve six power cooperatives in a part of southeastern Idaho called the Goshen bubble. FERC said it was unclear if PacifiCorp had met a requirement to provide non-discriminatory open access to transmission service.

Bonneville filed its complaint because it was unable to secure capacity on a 90MW transmission path called AMPS North to South, which is the only Bonneville direct link to the Goshen bubble. The agency said it would cost at least \$1.2mn/yr to buy transmission rights from another utility if it was unable to reserve capacity on its preferred path.

Bonneville now serves the power cooperatives through a longstanding deal in which PacifiCorp provides power and transmission service to the southeast Idaho load pocket. Bonneville in return provides an equivalent amount of power to PacifiCorp's western region. PacifiCorp decided to terminate that deal by 2016, prompting Bonneville to ask for service along the same transmission path.

But PacifiCorp rejected that request because it said its merchant business, PacifiCorp Energy, would continue reserving the full 90MW of capacity along the path. Bonneville argued there was no reason the company would need the full capacity after it stops serving Bonneville's customers in Goshen, but PacifiCorp said losing transmission service could physically strand part of its Colstrip and Big Fork power plants in Montana.

FERC said it could not decide on the complaint based on the existing record, so it ordered the start of evidentiary hearings. The order last week said PacifiCorp would need to further explain why it decided not to provide transmission service on the AMPS North to South pass and if future load growth justified PacifCorp's request to reserve the transfer capability of the path.