Al Wright chaired the work group’s eighth meeting at the Northwest Power Planning Council’s offices in Portland. About 30 people attended.

Out-of-town work group participants want to avoid traveling on Labor Day weekend, thus September 2 meeting was changed to a half day session on September 3. Al will coordinate with Dick Adams so that people can participate in the subscription work group meeting also that day. Watch the calendar for the time and place of the September 3 meeting. 

Al described his July 14 conversation with the Transition Board regarding the Transmission Work Group’s progress. The message from the Transition Board was that they would like to have a more definitive idea of the work group’s schedule and expected milestones through the end of the year. The Transition Board believes that if there is going to be any Northwest legislative package considered in the 1998 session that the pieces must fall into place by this December, if not sooner. Al promised the Transition Board an update of the group’s work plan, expected schedule and milestones in September. The work group will add details to the existing work plan and schedule at the next couple of meeting.

Work group members also requested for the next meeting, a presentation of the Council staff’s "cost analysis" that has been mentioned from time to time. Work group members are eager to get a look at this analysis and understand what it will show.

The majority of the day was spent discussing issues regarding FERC regulation of the Bonneville Power Administration. A small subgroup, led by Paul Murphy, presented their thinking on how FERC could regulate BPA in an equivalent manner to the way investor-owned utilities are now regulated. They analyzed about a dozen questions assuming that BPA remains a federal agency and focusing their attention on the transmission business only.

This draft is a second iteration, based on feed back from the work group, of what was presented at the July 1 meeting. For each of the key questions Paul presented the small group’s definition of "strict" equivalency and their recommended modified equivalency standards for BPA. The full group asked many clarifying questions, expressed their concerns about the recommendations, and identified where there are many remaining differences of opinion.

From this conversation the group determined that there are several areas that need more discussion. Al ask all work group members to document their thoughts on issues where they had concerns or differences of opinion with the draft recommendations. People were asked to have their thoughts drafted and available to Ken Corum by noon on August 15 so people could read them prior to the meeting on August 19^th. BPA staff said they would present a paper documenting their perspective on these issues at the August 5^th meeting.

The discussions of a revised issues list and the effect on transmission revenue requirements (and potential cost shifts among Bonneville customers) of FERC "IOU-equivalent" regulation were postponed until the next meeting.

The next meeting of the work group is scheduled for August 5, 1997 at 9:00 a.m. at the Northwest Power Planning Council office at 851 S.W. 6^th Avenue, Portland.