As one of the four
power marketing administrations within the
U.S. Department of Energy, the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA)'s role is to market wholesale
hydropower
Hydropower (from el, ὕδωρ, "water"), also known as water power, is the use of falling or fast-running water to produce electricity or to power machines. This is achieved by converting the gravitational potential or kinetic energy of ...
generated at 57 hydroelectric federal
dams operated by the
Bureau of Reclamation
The Bureau of Reclamation, and formerly the United States Reclamation Service, is a federal agency under the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees water resource management, specifically as it applies to the oversight and opera ...
,
and the
International Boundary and Water Commission
The International Boundary and Water Commission ( es, links=no, Comisión Internacional de Límites y Aguas) is an international body created by the United States and Mexico in 1889 to apply the rules for determining the location of their intern ...
. WAPA delivers this power through a more than 17,000-circuit-mile,
high-voltage
High voltage electricity refers to electrical potential large enough to cause injury or damage. In certain industries, ''high voltage'' refers to voltage above a certain threshold. Equipment and Electrical conductor, conductors that carry high ...
power transmission
Power transmission is the movement of energy from its place of generation to a location where it is applied to perform useful work.
Power is defined formally as units of energy per unit time. In SI units:
:\text = \frac = \frac
Since the develo ...
system to more than 700 preference power customers across the West. Those customers, in turn, provide retail electric service to more than 40 million consumers. WAPA is headquartered in the
Denver, Colorado
Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...
suburb of
Lakewood, Colorado
The City of Lakewood is the home rule municipality that is the most populous municipality in Jefferson County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 155,984 at the 2020 U.S. Census making Lakewood the fifth most populous city in Col ...
.
WAPA’s service territory spans 15 central and western states, including
Arizona
Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...
,
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
,
Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the ...
,
Iowa
Iowa () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wiscon ...
,
Kansas
Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the ...
,
Minnesota
Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...
,
Montana
Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbi ...
,
Nebraska
Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the southwe ...
,
Nevada
Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...
,
New Mexico
)
, population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano)
, seat = Santa Fe
, LargestCity = Albuquerque
, LargestMetro = Tiguex
, OfficialLang = None
, Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ker ...
,
North Dakota
North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the Native Americans in the United States, indigenous Dakota people, Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north a ...
,
South Dakota
South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota people, Lakota and Dakota peo ...
,
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...
,
Utah
Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...
, and
Wyoming
Wyoming () is a U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the south ...
.
History
WAPA was created in Section 302 of the Department of Energy Organization Act signed into law by President Jimmy Carter, Aug. 4, 1977. Under the statute, WAPA assumed power marketing responsibilities and ownership, operation and maintenance of the federal transmission system from the
Bureau of Reclamation
The Bureau of Reclamation, and formerly the United States Reclamation Service, is a federal agency under the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees water resource management, specifically as it applies to the oversight and opera ...
. Reclamation retained responsibility for other uses of the multi-purpose water projects, including dam and powerplant construction, operation and maintenance.
Power marketing
WAPA's hydropower resources are produced at federal dams in 11 states, representing about 40 percent of hydroelectric generation in the western and central United States. WAPA also formerly marketed the United States’ 547-megawatt entitlement from the coal-fired
Navajo Generating Station
Navajo Generating Station was a 2.25-gigawatt (2,250 MW), coal-fired power plant located on the Navajo Nation, near Page, Arizona, United States. This plant provided electrical power to customers in Arizona, Nevada, and California. It also provi ...
near Page, Arizona until its closure on 18 November 2019.
Hydropower is considered a byproduct of the federal dams whose primary purpose is to store water for irrigation and to provide navigation and flood control. Before hydropower, multiple other uses were adopted for federal dams, including municipal and industrial water needs, recreation, salinity control and fish and wildlife. Initial powerplants at the dams were constructed to first serve project-use loads and then to provide revenue from power sales.
WAPA first reserves power to meet project needs called project-use power; this energy powers the facilities at the dams and pumps water at Federal irrigation projects. WAPA then sells the surplus generation at cost-based rates to preference power customers under long-term contracts. Any remaining hydropower is then sold at market-based prices on the short-term spot market.
Cost-based rates are designed to cover annual operations and maintenance and the federal investment in the facilities, plus interest. WAPA only charges market rates when selling surplus hydropower and transmission capacity in the open market after meeting all contractual obligations.
WAPA offers four basic types of contracts:
* long-term firm power and other long term sales
* nonfirm energy and short-term sales and purchases
* seasonal power sales and
* purchase power
WAPA sells the generation from dams and powerplants on a project-specific basis. A project may consist of one large powerplant or the combined generation of several powerplants of varying sizes. Although Congress often determines the definition of a project, WAPA has combined projects into 11 rate-setting systems to sell the power and set rates more effectively and efficiently:
*
Boulder Canyon Project
Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado, Black Canyon of the Colorado River (U.S.), Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 ...
*
Central Arizona Project
The Central Arizona Project (CAP) is a 336 mi (541 km) diversion canal in Arizona in the southern United States.
The aqueduct diverts water from the Colorado River to the Bill Williams Wildlife Refuge south portion of Lake Havasu ne ...
*
Central Valley Project
The Central Valley Project (CVP) is a federal power and water management project in the U.S. state of California under the supervision of the United States Bureau of Reclamation (USBR). It was devised in 1933 in order to provide irrigation an ...
* Falcon-Amistad Project
* Loveland Area Projects
* Parker-Davis Project
*
Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program—Eastern Division
* Provo River Project
* Salt Lake City Area Integrated Projects
* Washoe Project
WAPA and its energy-producing partners are separately managed and financed. In addition, each water project maintains a separate financial system and records.
Transmission system
WAPA owns, operates and maintains a more than 17,000-circuit-mile, high-voltage transmission system that represents more than 10 percent of the transmission lines in the
Western Electricity Coordinating Council
The Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) promotes Bulk Electric System (BES) reliability for the entire Western Interconnection system. WECC is the Regional Entity responsible for compliance monitoring and enforcement. In addition, WE ...
area. The transmission capacity is first reserved to deliver the contractually obligated hydropower to customers. Any other utility may purchase remaining capacity on WAPA’s system on the Open Access, Same-Time Information System.
WAPA’s transmission system includes power lines, substations, power transformers, communication towers, circuit breakers, interconnections and direct-current ties. WAPA personnel both maintain this system and operate balancing authorities, ensuring energy supply matches demand 24 hours a day. WAPA also offers ancillary services to customers to ensure reliable grid operations.
WAPA built several parts of the important
Path 15
Path 15 is an portion of the north–south power transmission corridor in California, U.S. It forms a part of the Pacific AC Intertie and the California-Oregon Transmission Project. Path 15 is part of The Western Electricity Coordinating Cou ...
corridor that connects power grids in the
Southwest
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...
and
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Tho ...
(the rest was privately built by
PG&E
The Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is an American investor-owned utility (IOU). The company is headquartered in the Pacific Gas & Electric Building, in San Francisco, California. PG&E provides natural gas and electricity to 5.2 millio ...
). Recently, WAPA helped remedy a
transmission bottleneck near
Los Banos, California
Los Banos ( ), alternatively Los Baños ( ), is a city in Merced County, California, United States. It is located in the San Joaquin Valley in central California, near the junction of State Route 152 and Interstate 5. Its population was 45,532 ...
. That bottleneck was one of the reasons for the
California electricity crisis
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
in 2000-01. Another important transmission corridor WAPA built was
Path 66
California Oregon Intertie (COI), identified as Path 66 by Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC), is a corridor of three roughly parallel 500 kV alternating current power lines connecting the electric grids of Oregon and California. Th ...
, paralleling Path 15.
WAPA also owns and operates many electric power substations like the
Mead substation to distribute power within the region.
WAPA settled with FERC and NERC for the 2011 blackout.
WAPA's customers
Various laws, including the Reclamation Project Act of 1939, require WAPA to give preference to certain types of non-profit organizations seeking to purchase Federal power. Preference customers include state and Federal agencies, water and irrigation districts, municipalities, public utility districts, Native American tribes and rural electric cooperatives. A law may also designate specific entities that must receive preference in power sales from a particular powerplant or project. WAPA has some discretion regarding which preference entities should receive power and has allocated power to wildlife refuges, universities and mass transit systems.
Sometimes, legislation specifies a geographic area that receives priority to Federal hydropower. WAPA also places geographic limits on the marketing of power, which define the location of eligible customers. Marketing area boundaries are usually based on past marketing practices, the location of the powerplants generating the electricity being sold, state boundary lines or river drainages.
Transmission Infrastructure Program
Section 402 of the
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) (), nicknamed the Recovery Act, was a stimulus package enacted by the 111th U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in February 2009. Developed in response to the Gr ...
amended the Hoover Power Plant Act of 1984 to give WAPA authority to borrow up to $3.25 billion from the U.S. Treasury to pursue transmission projects that promote the delivery of renewable generation into the electric transmission grid.
To implement that authority, WAPA created the Transmission Infrastructure Program (TIP). Two projects have been completed under this authority, and several others are in the development process.
Agency organization
WAPA employees conduct power sales, transmission operations and maintenance and engineering services at 51 duty stations organized under four regions, a management center and headquarters.
The regions and management centers oversee the power and transmission contracts, operations and maintenance while centralized functions, such as finance, information technology, safety and security, are handled by headquarters.
The core offices are:
* Headquarters,
Lakewood, Colorado
The City of Lakewood is the home rule municipality that is the most populous municipality in Jefferson County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 155,984 at the 2020 U.S. Census making Lakewood the fifth most populous city in Col ...
* Desert Southwest Regional Office,
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Arizona#List of cities and towns, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1 ...
* Rocky Mountain Regional Office,
Loveland, Colorado
* Sierra Nevada Regional Office,
Folsom, California
* Upper Great Plains Regional Office,
Billings, Montana
Billings is the largest city in the U.S. state of Montana, with a population of 117,116 as of the 2020 census. Located in the south-central portion of the state, it is the seat of Yellowstone County and the principal city of the Billings Met ...
* Colorado River Storage Project Management Center,
Salt Lake City, Utah
Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the Capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the county seat, seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Sal ...
Senior executive team
* Administrator and CEO Tracey A. LeBeau
* Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Tina Ko (acting)
* Senior VP and Chief Financial Officer Michael Peterson
* Senior VP and Chief Information Officer Michael Montoya
* Senior VP and General Counsel Ron Klinefelter (acting)
* Senior VP and Assistant Administrator for Corporate Liaison Dionne Thompson
* Senior VP and Chief Administrative Officer and Transmission Infrastructure Program Manager Paul Schwabe
* Senior VP and Desert Southwest Regional Manager Jack Murray
* Senior VP and Rocky Mountain Regional Manager Barton Barnhart
* Senior VP and Sierra Nevada Regional Manager Sonja Anderson
* Senior VP and Upper Great Plains Regional Manager Lloyd Linke
* Senior VP and Colorado River Storage Project Management Center Manager Rodney Bailey (acting)
References
{{authority control
Public utilities of the United States
United States Department of Energy agencies
Companies based in Lakewood, Colorado
1977 establishments in the United States
Government agencies established in 1977