Field notes
About field notes
Short explanations built around one question. Follow the facts to their sources or open a map view in a new tab.
Scenarios: an added load set against a few choices over an episode's reported hours; every output modeled.
Expectations: what an issuer forecast for the same year, edition by edition.
Wholesale prices: the issuer's price at one node, one market and one interval at a time.
Named loads: what large customers announced, requested, contracted and were billed, kept apart.
Episodes, hour by hour or month by month: January 2024 cold spell · Bonneville and the frame, month by month
- Field note 01, WA
A dam's size is not its output
Why does the biggest dam in the country produce a quarter of what its rating suggests?
Grand Coulee is the largest power plant in the United States by nameplate capacity. In 2024 it generated about a quarter of what that capacity could produce running flat out all year. Here is why the two numbers differ, and what each one is good for.
Grand Coulee Dam, Bureau of Reclamation, Bonneville Power Administration
- Field note 02, WA, MT
Near you, owned by your utility, bought by your utility
What is the difference between the plants near a utility's customers, the plants it owns, and the power it buys?
Puget Sound Energy serves a million electric customers around Puget Sound. The plants nearest them are mostly not the company's; the plants the company owns are mostly elsewhere; and a third of the electricity it sells is bought from other sellers under contracts whose prices it reports to federal regulators. Three maps of the same utility, three different answers to "where does my power come from".
Puget Sound Energy, Puget Sound Energy, Colstrip Steam Electric Station, Centralia Generating Facility, Talen Montana, TransAlta Centralia Generation, Chelan County PUD
- Field note 03, WA
What a household pays, and where it goes
Where does a household's electric bill go, and which of those steps have public prices?
A Snohomish County home paying its electric bill is paying a public utility district, which buys most of its power from the Bonneville Power Administration, which sells the output of federal dams at cost. Here is the money, step by step, with every number tied to a published sheet or filing and every assumption stated.
Snohomish County PUD, Bonneville Power Administration, Bonneville Power Administration
- Field note 04, WA, MT
Who runs the grid
Who owns, runs, balances and sells the power from a Northwest plant?
A power plant has an owner, an operator, a balancing authority and someone who eventually sells the electricity. They are four different relationships and they often belong to four different organizations. Here is how to tell them apart, using seven Northwest plants.
Grand Coulee Dam, Bureau of Reclamation, Bonneville Power Administration, Puget Sound Energy, Puget Sound Energy, Colstrip Steam Electric Station, Talen Montana, Lower Snake River Wind Energy Project, Seattle City Light, Boundary Dam, Seattle City Light, Grant PUD, Priest Rapids Dam, Wanapum Dam, Grant PUD, Energy Northwest, Columbia Generating Station, Rattlesnake Flat, Rattlesnake Flat Wind Farm, Avista, Avista, Orcas Power & Light Coop
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