Guest Column by Bill Nicholson
Educating our community on safety
During a recent storm, a TV news crew came dangerously close to a downed energized power line while reporting on a story. Thankfully, no one was hurt — but it confirmed our belief that keeping people safe requires continuous education. This helped spark our plan to meet with elected officials and senior-level managers throughout our operating area to discuss how we can best work together to keep the public safe. These meetings will help us improve coordination and establish safety protocols and procedures among service providers.

Our efforts to restore power during a storm are often done in partnership with others. Our crews coordinate with law enforcement, road crews from state and local transportation departments, and other public service and community partners. In a large-scale outage or regional event, PGE will need to work closely with other service providers to safely restore the region’s infrastructure.
Read more.

Bill Nicholson
Senior Vice President, Customer Service, Transmission & Distribution

Fish are returning on the Deschutes
2012 will be the first year since the 1960s that adult salmon and steelhead from the upper Deschutes River basin are going to complete their lifecycle in the streams where they were naturally reared. PGE was recently authorized by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs to transport about half of the returning adult spring chinook, summer steelhead, and sockeye salmon upstream past the Pelton Round Butte Hydroelectric Project, where PGE and the Tribes installed the Selective Water Withdrawal power generation intake and associated fish capture and transport facility in late 2009 that allows downstream fish migration. Since then, more than 300,000 fish have traveled down the Deschutes on their way to the ocean. The first adults began returning last year, and the numbers are expected to build this spring and summer. See the complete story at DeschutesPassage.com.

Biomass at Boardman
PGE is making important progress with research into the potential for a biomass conversion at the Boardman Power Plant. A reliable, sustainable fuel source is critical, so we’re looking at dedicated energy crops including — but not limited to — Arundo donax. Last year we worked with Boardman-area growers to plant test plots of Arundo, which is a fast-growing perennial grass with the kind of productivity that could make it an important part of the mix. Although we still have much to learn, the results are promising so far. We harvested the first year’s growth and are now working on finding a way to torrefy it. This charring process drives out moisture, increases energy content, and allows the biomass to be pulverized and burned with minimal modifications to the existing power plant.

We’re a long way from a decision on biomass conversion, but this research has important potential to broaden the range of resource options available to meet our customers’ need for reliable, affordable, and sustainably generated electricity. Stay tuned for further developments as we work toward a test-burn at Boardman in 2014.

Franchise fees and city budgets
This month, PGE will be presenting more than $54 million in payments to 52 Oregon cities in annual franchise fees and privilege taxes for the right to operate within their municipalities. The amount PGE pays a city ranges from 3.5 percent to 5 percent of the annual gross revenue earned within that city. Individual city results will vary based on a variety factors, such as a city-imposed privilege tax, local changes to population, economic and business conditions, and participation by some nonresidential customers in Oregon’s electricity direct-access program.

Robertson talks about sustainability at annual summit
At PGE, sustainability means operating in a way we can sustain over time — environmentally, socially, and economically. That is what Dave Robertson, vice president of public policy at PGE, shared with a group of more than 200 people at the annual Salem-Keizer Sustainability Summit last month. Robertson said as a resource-based industry, the business decisions made by PGE impact the air we breathe and the water we use, as well as the land where we work and live. It also impacts the cost of the electricity for the businesses and residents throughout the company’s operating area. But, ultimately, as a local company that’s here for the long haul, operating sustainably makes good economic sense — for PGE’s business, employees, customers, and investors.