Breaking the Gigabyte Barrier on the Key Peninsula; Not So Wild a Dream (Peninsula Gateway, Gig Harbor, WA – Paywall Advisory)

Poor internet service on the Key Peninsula is legendary, and nearly everyone has a horror story— streaming video that stutters and balks, homework that takes an hour to download, new connections that can’t be had for love or money.

The coronavirus pandemic has made the situation worse, as hundreds of students and teachers try to use the same creaking old copper-wire system at the same time.

“It was impossible,” said Cindy Greetham, who was trying to teach 20 fourth-graders by Zoom from her waterfront house near Home. “The screen would freeze. I couldn’t hear them. They couldn’t hear me. Half the time, I would get a band across the screen that said, ‘the internet is unstable.’ “

Now, however, because of an unusual confluence of events — including, ironically. the pandemic itself— the digital logjam on the Key Peninsula may be about to break.

Pierce County is pondering a multi-million-dollar effort to extend broadband in rural areas. Bills are coursing through the state legislature. A pot of federal money is about to roll downhill from the CARES and other acts. Satellite companies are getting into the act. Utilities in neighboring counties are sizing up the possibilities.

Even the local electric co-op, Peninsula Light Co., is taking a look —somewhat reluctantly— at getting involved.

“What we discovered during the pandemic is that broadband has become an essential commodity,” said Mark Cockerill, a director of the Key Peninsula Community Council and leader of its Broadband Project. “It ranks right up there with electricity, food and shelter.”

Derek Young, the area’s member for the Pierce County Council, calls broadband “the rural electrification for our generation.”

“I’ve got constituents who go the parking lot at Burger King for wi-fi because they can’t get internet access at home,” he said. “We owe it to this generation to make sure they can thrive and compete in today’s market.”

Young said Pierce County is looking to commit $20 million to $30 million “immediately” to roll out broadband fiber optics “countywide as far as we can get it.”

“We’ve had conversations with possible providers in the past, but we’ve never had the wherewithall to make them real,” he said. “Now we’ve got real cash to invest, and these conversations are going to get real.”

Lagging Speeds

The FCC considers 25 megabytes per second (Mbs) the minimum for “good” internet service and recommends 100 Mbs for high-intensity uses like two-video and video streaming. In big cities, “gigabit internet,” or speeds of 1 gigabyte per second (Gbs), are becoming common.

But a survey the Key Peninsula council took last year found that 55 percent of KP residents who responded had internet speeds of less than 11 Mbs, and 36 percent had less than 6 Mbs. A few users reported speeds below 1 Mbs.

The problem is that most of the internet connections on the Key Peninsula are made over painfully slow copper lines left over from the old telephone system. The provider, Century Link, has made it clear it has no interest in upgrading to faster fiber optic cables. It will not pay, the company says, because it’s a rural area with too much distance between customers.

“it’s the same problem they had in the 1930s with rural electrification, said Bob Hunter, general manager of the neighboring Kitsap PUD. “Because it doesn’t pay, private companies won’t do it.”

The copper-wire system, called Digital Subscriber Line, or DSL, uses higher, inaudible frequencies to carry the bleeps and bloops of digital information over the telephone lines, along with conversations. Once cutting-edge technology, it’s now considered hopelessly obsolete. Speeds top out at about 25 Mbs, but in practice seldom reach even that.

What’s more, DSL speed is dependent on the number of users on the line. The analogy is not perfect, but it’s somewhat like sharing a water line — when everyone’s faucet is open, the water pressure drops.

“The first house does fine, but by the time you get to the end of the street, there’s nothing left at all,” said Cockerill.

Broadband Deserts

The Key Peninsula is 16 miles long and is home to about 16,000 people in communities like Wauna, Key Center, Vaughn, Home, Lakebay, and Longbranch. Most are served by Centurylink, with a small area bordering Mason County served by Comcast.

Two areas — one north and west of Vaughn, and the other near Longbranch — have no internet service at all, and no one willing to bring it, said Kris Hagel, executive director of digital learning at the Peninsula School District.

“It’s a big problem for us, especially when children have to learn from home,” Hagel said.

At the height of this school closure last winter, the parking lots at Vaughn and Evergreen elementary schools were full of cars in the dark of the night, as parents and students with laptops used the school wi-fi to access their lessons.

In the Greetham home, things were pretty desperate. Both Cindy Greetham and her husband, Jim, teach in the Peninsula School District, and their daughter, Ann, 20, was home from college, so there was a lively competition among laptops. When all three needed to use the internet at once, it simply swooned away.

Several times a week, Cindy need to upload a 10-minute video for her students. But the DSL service is asymmetric — it’s designed to be faster down than up.

“It would take me seven hours to upload a 10-minute video,” she recalled. “Sometimes I would let my Mac run overnight, and it would still be working in the morning.”

Eventually, the Greethams got a wi-fi hotspot from the school district, one of more than 500 Kris Hagel and his team scattered around the peninsula. Some 50 of the district’s school buses were also equipped with hot spots, which pluck their internet signal from cellphone towers.

Peninsula Light Is Wary

Pierce County commissioned a study, unveiled last month, that examined satellite, over-the-air wi-fi and several other technologies, and concluded that fiber-optic cable — known as “fiber to the premises” — is the most practical solution. Fiber-optic cable is actually cheaper to string than copper — it costs between $8,500 and $10,000 a mile. But who will string it?

The county’s consultants, CTC Technology and Energy, reported that both Century Link and Comcast demanded heavy subsidies to bring fiber-optic cable to the Key Peninsula. Century Link wanted a 65 to 75 percent subsidy; Comcast offered to serve 525 more homes in the northern part of the peninsula, but said it would require a $2 million subsidy to do so.

Inevitably, in nearly every conversation among experts, the name of the Peninsula Light Co. comes up The Gig Harbor-based electrical cooperative owns nearly 6,000 poles and 130 miles of overhead wires on the Key Peninsula.

“It would obviously be the best solution,” Cockerill said, and others agree.

“In terms of stringing fiber, having a partner like PenLight would be ideal” said Young.

But the co-op is skittish about getting outside its area of expertise.

“We’re an electric and water utility, and that’s what we do,” said Ryan Redmond, PenLight’s chief resources officer. “Right now, we’re listening. We are interested in what we can do to help, but that doesn’t mean we’re going into the broadband business.”

Utility insiders are painfully aware of what happened to Tacoma Public Utilities, which used excess capacity on its meter-reading fiber network to start the cable provider Click!. Although Click! was popular with customers — and forced its commercial competitor to improve service and lower prices — it never made money, and was eventually forced to privatize.

Two Nearby Models

But just over the county line are two similar public utilities that have made the leap into broadband successfully, using a public-private model that sidesteps the Click! conundrum

Both Mason County PUD and Kitsap County PUD offer their members high-speed broadband over fiber-optic cable. The utilities own the cable, but lease capacity on it to private internet service providers who compete among themselves for customers.

It was at first a case of strange bedfellows.

“We were strictly a water and sewer utility,” explained Bob Hunter, the Kitsap PUD general manager, “We got into telecom back in 2000 to solve a telephone problem — there were three different phone companies, and it was long-distance to call from Poulsbo to Port Orchard, or from Port Orchard to Kingston.”

The PUD build a fiber-optic network to connect “anchor institutions,” like the courthouse, the school district and its own substations,.

“By 2016, people who worked in these places were asking us, ‘Hey, why can’t we have this at home?’“ Hunter said. “They told us, ‘We’ll pay for it if you build it.’”

Gigabyte Internet

To finance the build-out, Kitsap PUD sought loans from investors that could be amortized over 20 years. Homeowners who sign up can pay off the cost — up to $10,000 a home — through a yearly assessment by the county, averaging about $150 a month. In addition, they pay their chosen ISP $75 a month for internet service.

In return, customers get “Gigabyte internet” — speeds of 1 GBs, both up and down. They can choose from among five internet providers, and switch among them at any time.

Hunter is first to admit the solution is not cheap. “People have called it ‘Internet for the rich,’” he said. “I call it ‘Internet for those who can afford it.’“ Still, he said, it’s a first step.

Mason PUD, to the south, uses a variation on the same system. Begun as an electrical utility in the 1930s, Mason PUD got into fiber to connect its own substations.

“Then people began asking us to serve them, too,” said Lynn Eaton, the utility’s communications manager, “Well, that’s the whole reason PUDs exist in the first place, going back to rural electrification. So we feel it is our duty to fill that need.”

Mason PUD has built out wherever it can find a critical mass of demand, in what it calls “fiberhoods.”

“We set up a model that has a 12-year payback time. There’s a $25-a-month construction add-on, in addition to the ISP cost. We don’t build until 75% of the residents of an area say they want it, and they only pay if they take the service.”

As in Kitsap, Mason PUD customers have their choice of several private service providers, and can switch among them at will.

“It’s been really successful for us, but it’s a long road,” Eaton said.

Federal Money, With a Hitch

Federal funding can help smooth out the inequalities in broadband access, and there are literally billions of dollars ready to pour forth for that purpose from the CARES act and President Joe Biden’s big infrastructure bill.

Under Biden’s American Rescue Plan, the Department of Commerce, for instance, would be given $3 billion in additional for funding for public works and infrastructure; the Treasury Capital Projects fund, $10 billion; the FCC’s Emergency Connectivity Fund, $10 billion; rural community development block grants, $45 billion, and so forth.

But there’s a catch: most of the money is intended for “retail” providers, and Washington State has a law — championed by Comcast — that prohibits PUDs from providing retail service — that is, selling directly to consumers.

“PUDS are not really interested in retail,” said Mason PUD’s Hunter. “We think the open access system we are using, with private partners, works just fine. But without what’s called ‘retail authority,’ we can’t access the billions of dollars that’s going to be available in federal funding.”

A bill giving PUDs that authority — HB 1336, sponsored by Rep. Drew Hanson of Bainbridge Island — was approved on Sunday by the state Legislature.

Hugh Taylor, the principal policy analyst for Pierce County, said the county has basically identified the technical issues and the key players — including PenLight — and is now concentrating on “getting them to talk to each other.”

County May Take Charge

Derek Young, the county council member, told The Gateway on Monday that Pierce County has asked its technical consultant to explore whether the county itself should take charge of wiring under-served areas for broadband.

“If that’s the case, we’re going to push forward on that,” he said. “If not, we’re going to look to partners like PenLight or others.”

It’s not just a Key Peninsula problem, Young noted.

“We have areas all over the county which are either not served at all, or where people are paying a lot of money for very poor service.”

An example, he said, is Frederickson, which is the county’s manufacturing and industrial center.

“We lose customers daily, because they find out they can’t get broadband internet,” Young said. “This are big industrial users who need to upload terrabytes of data. They’re not going to be satisfied with DSL on copper wires.”

Help from Kitsap?

Hunter of Kitsap PUD, who says he started out strictly a “water and sewer guy,” is now an enthusiastic evangelist for broadband.

“I understand utilities that don’t want to get into this business,” he said, “But at the end of the day, we work for the public. People started petitioning us to do this, and I can tell you, there’s nothing more powerful than hearing from the people you serve.”

The Hanson bill just passed in the Legislature includes language that would allow PUDs from other counties to serve Pierce County customers, and Hunter says his utility might be interested.

If the financing could be put together, Hunter said, Kitsap PUD would be willing to undertake the job of installing a fiber-optic backbone for the Key Peninsula and run it for a few years, providing he could turn it over to a local utility once it were up and running.

“The first thing I would want to do,” he said, “Is have a meeting with PenLight.”

 

Oregon 100% Clean Electricity Bill Advances with Utility, Activist Support (Portland Business Journal, OR)

Oregon would jump back to the fore in tackling climate emissions under a 100% clean electricity bill that emerged from a House committee on Monday.

The bill has the support of the investor-owned utilities it primarily affects, Portland General Electric and PacifiCorp, along with environmental, climate and social justice groups who were in on negotiations with the utilities over the past several weeks.

Facing a Tuesday deadline to move the bill, the Energy and Environment Committee sent an amended version of House Bill 2021 to the Revenue Committee on a 4-3 party-line vote — backed by Democrats and opposed by Republicans.

The Oregon Legislature last made a big climate move in 2016, when it passed a law requiring the utilities to source 50% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2040 and end use of coal.

HB 2021 mandates an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for the utilities from a 2010-12 baseline by 2030, 90% by 2035 and 100% by 2040. It moves ahead of similar policies in neighboring Washington and California that target 2045.

The emissions-based approach would largely be implemented through Public Utility Commission planning. Other key provisions of the bill:

Give the utilities new pathways to work with local governments that want to move faster than the bill outlines (a contrast with California where local entities have been empowered to break away from their utility);

·         Ban siting of new fossil-fuel plants;

·         Set labor standards for project development;

·         Require the utilities to consider the environmental justice ramifications of their clean energy plans by working with a committee of diverse stakeholders;

·         Put a cap on the incremental cost of meeting the goals;

·         Allow PUC to grant temporary exemptions to ensure system reliability.

Some solar developers and others had argued for a different approach — requiring the utilities to increase the percentage of electricity they sell that comes from renewable sources, building on the state's current renewable portfolio standard, paired with a hefty in-state requirement for new projects.

The utilities argued in-state requirements would hinder efforts to take advantage of regional grid efficiencies.

As amended, HB 2021 does call for a study of small-scale renewables and appropriates $50 million for a grant fund for community renewable energy products.

 

Op/Ed: Data Doesn't Support Washington State Clean Fuel Standard Claims (Puget Sound Business Journal, Seattle, WA)

A recent opinion piece in the Business Journal urged legislators in Olympia to adopt a clean fuel standard for economic and environmental reasons. However, based on the results of this fuel mandate in California and Oregon, also known as the low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS), many of those claims are not supported by actual data.

First, based on data from California and Oregon, an LCFS has not lowered fuel costs. The goal of an LCFS is to reduce the carbon content of gasoline and diesel fuels by either blending them with increasing amounts of biofuels or through the purchase of compliance credits from suppliers of lower carbon fuels or qualified entities such as transit agencies and electric utilities.

While an LCFS is designed to have minimal cost impact initially, compliance costs increase as the mandate becomes more stringent over time. In California, according to agency data, the LCFS added about 1 cent per gallon to the cost of gasoline in 2015. Currently, agency data shows the LCFS is adding 24 cents per gallon and we estimate the added cost will likely increase to more than 60 cents per gallon by 2030. These LCFS compliance cost premiums are clearly documented in Oil Price Information Service (OPIS) spot market reports.

Second, California’s LCFS is not the reason petroleum fuel costs have gone down since the mandate was implemented. There are several components that impact the price of petroleum fuel, with the cost of crude oil being the most dominant. The price of crude oil produced on the Alaskan North Slope — the primary source on the West Coast — has decreased by more than 50% since 2011. Without the LCFS in place, petroleum fuel costs in California would have fallen by a larger amount.

Third, environmental benefits from an LCFS are uncertain. When attributing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to a state LCFS, it is important to consider existing policies, blend mandates and interactions with the federal Renewable Fuel Standard. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has recognized these challenges as part of their environmental analysis on the 2019 LCFS Amendments and reported that annual GHG emission reductions attributable to LCFS have only been about 1% of total statewide emissions.

Furthermore, an LCFS is not an air quality program, so meaningful health benefits from an LCFS are unlikely. CARB estimates that California’s LCFS decreases annual nitrogen oxide emissions from the state’s transportation sector by less than 1% and particulate matter by less than 2% — two key pollutants that impact human health.

These environmental impact estimates do not take into consideration emissions from “fuel shuffling” which occurs when transporting fuels over long distances into and within the state to comply with the LCFS. Our research has documented that changes in the fuel market supply due to an LCFS as well as the additional transport required for feedstocks and finished fuels also have impacts on greenhouse gas emissions and air quality, which must be considered.

Lastly, an LCFS is unlikely to spur an expansive biofuel industry in Washington with associated job creation. In California, for instance, only 12% of liquid biofuel fuel pathways registered under LCFS — including ethanol, biodiesel and renewable diesel — come from in-state production facilities. The vast majority of biofuel production facilities are located in the Midwest due to close proximity of appropriate feedstocks and friendlier business climates.

Accounting for other alternative transportation fuels like natural gas, electricity and propane, only 20% of fuel production facilities are located in California. These fuels face their own set of challenges like deployment of accompanying vehicle technologies and infrastructure availability.

In considering whether to adopt an LCFS in Washington, actual data from California and Oregon — the only two states with this fuel mandate — provide important insight on whether an LCFS would be effective in reducing GHG emissions or providing other benefits in the state.

 

Op/Ed: We're Asking the Wrong Questions About the Cost of Renewables (Portland Business Journal, OR)

This year will mark my 30th working in energy-related fields. I began as an intern at the Bonneville Power Administration in 1991 and have worked as an energy professional ever since. I’ve stayed in this field because I have a passion for it. Energy policy impacts so many different aspects of our lives. From the air we breathe to climate change and social equity, energy choices are of paramount importance.

One question I often hear debated is whether wind and solar power are now cheaper than hydropower. This is most often brought up by people contending that hydropower can be replaced by other renewables at a cost savings.

While all three resources are carbon-free and harness renewable energy (wind, sunshine, flowing water), most of the region’s dams were built between the 1940s and 1970s and have already been paid for. So, existing hydropower has a distinct affordability edge, even if you add in the cost of turbine upgrades at the region’s dams.

Still, I believe people are asking the wrong question.

We shouldn’t think of replacing hydropower generation with wind and solar plants. Instead, we should ask how our carbon-free energy resources can best partner to help us reach our decarbonization goals.

To answer this question, you have to understand how the electric grid works.

The entire Western electricity grid – from Canada down to parts of Mexico – operates as a synchronized mega-machine, governing millions of smaller machines. If, at any moment, the grid loses its perfect balance between supply and demand of energy, the synchronization fails. If this happens, it could lead to uncontrolled cascading blackouts across the Western US, Western Canada, and parts of Mexico. To put it mildly, that would be bad.

Something that adds to the complexity is that our demand for electricity constantly ebbs and flows as nearly 100 million people across the West turn on lights, cook meals, stream videos, charge their EVs, and heat or cool their homes.

Wind and solar power are valuable in this mix because they provide an inexpensive carbon-free energy source. However, because wind and solar power are dependent on near-term weather (wind and sunshine), they can actually make the grid more difficult to balance.

This is where hydropower shows its impressive value. Like wind and solar power, hydropower provides important zero-carbon energy to the grid, but its true importance is in its ability to act like a giant clean energy battery. Hydropower dams do this by storing more water when electricity isn’t needed and releasing it past hydroelectric turbines when it is. This unique ability helps make the grid’s delicate balancing act possible.

This role is especially important because long-duration batteries aren’t commercially viable, and even shorter-duration lithium-ion batteries are still very expensive. This is one of the reasons the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recently called on Congress to, "[preserve] operating nuclear and hydroelectric facilities where possible,” to ensure we don’t overburden vulnerable communities with excessive costs.

This statement recognizes that hydropower is a zero-carbon energy resource that can ramp up and down energy production on a moment’s notice, allowing us to add more wind and solar power safely to the grid. Malcolm Woolf, CEO of the National Hydropower Association, puts it best: “Hydropower is a clean energy force multiplier.”

As we contend with the devastating effects of climate change and the threat of a worsening crisis, we need our best carbon-free energy options to remain on the table, and there is no question that hydropower’s special capabilities mean it should be at the top of the list.

Kurt Miller is the executive director of the nonprofit Northwest RiverPartners, which advocates for hydropower.

 

Maui-Based Companies Team Up to Work on Solar Power Project in Oregon (Pacific Business Journal, HI)

Two Maui-based companies, Neighborhood Power Corp. and Mana Monitoring, have partnered on a large community solar power project in Oregon.

Neighborhood Power, a solar seller with an office in Kahului, and Mana Monitoring, a cloud-based energy solutions management specialist in Lahaina, combined to develop four 2.5-megawatt solar farms within the service territory of Portland General Electric.

Three of the four farms are currently operational, according to Mana Monitoring. They are the first commissioned projects in Oregon’s newly mandated Community Solar Program, in which commercial and low-income residential customers — especially those without the means to add their own solar panels — can purchase energy from nearby renewable sources.

According to the program, its early returns have seen subscribers save an average of 5-20% on annual electricity costs.

“We believe everyone deserves the opportunity to benefit from renewable energy but also recognize not every home, building, or housing situation allows for the purchase and installation of solar PV,” said Benjamin S. Collinwood, vice president of sales at Neighborhood Power, in a statement. “Community solar projects like this help contribute to a healthier environment for the entire community, and Mana Monitoring helps us ensure our solar farms reach peak performance and generate the expected returns we can pass on to subscribers.”

Mana Monitoring’s platform tracks, or aggregates, the production of each farm on a centralized dashboard in order to maximize solar performance.

“Real-time monitoring is essential for managers of community solar projects like Neighborhood Power to optimize system uptime, which ultimately translates into maximum savings for subscribers,” said Zoltan Milaskey, president of Mana Monitoring, in a statement. “Mana Monitoring’s platform is used on more than 500 MW of energy nationally, and working with other renewable energy experts like Neighborhood Power allows us to bring our combined experience to Oregon in a powerful way.”

Pacific Business News profiled Milaskey in 2019, while Neighborhood Power’s Stephen Gates wrote a PBN piece about he opened markets in an unstable industry in PBN in 2015.

 

Avista Utilities Submits Resource Plan to Washington, Idaho Regulators Outlining Clean-Energy Goals (Spokesman-Review, Spokane, WA)

Avista Utilities is planning to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels by acquiring additional wind generation resources and upgrading its biomass and hydroelectric plants, according to the utility’s 2021 electric integrated resource plan.

The plan, submitted last week to the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission and the Idaho Public Utility Commission, shapes Avista’s strategy to meet electric load growth for the next 24 years.

The resource plan also outlines the utility company’s goals to meet Washington state’s requirement of 100% clean energy by 2045 and have a carbon-neutral supply of electricity by the end of 2027.

Nearly 55% of Avista’s current power generating potential comes from hydropower, biomass, wind and solar, according to its 2021 resource plan, known by its acronym IRP.

“We evaluate many options to find the ideal strategy to serve our customers that balances cost, reliability and the environment,” Jason Thackston, Avista’s senior vice president of energy resources, said in a statement. “We are pleased to have a plan that builds on our already strong commitment to the environment.”

Avista officials indicated in their resource plan that they plan to add 200 megawatts of wind generation from a project in Montana in 2023 and 2024, with an additional 100 megawatts of wind power to follow in 2028.

Avista is mulling the possibility of increasing the capacity of its Kettle Falls biomass plant by nearly 12 megawatts before 2026.

The utility, in its 2020 resource plan, found it to be cost-effective to also modernize its Post Falls hydro facility. That would increase that dam’s capacity by 8 megawatts.

Avista’s 2021 resource plan includes information about the utility’s 15% ownership of Units 3 and 4 of the coal-fired power plant in Colstrip, Montana. Avista is one of six owners of Units 3 and 4 at the plant.

Avista and other utility companies in the state will no longer be allowed to distribute electricity from coal-fired generation after 2025 due to the Washington Clean Energy Transformation Act.

Avista indicated it’s economically feasible for the utility to exit the Colstrip facility, but an exit strategy has not yet been agreed upon by its owners.

“Given the difficulty of exiting ownership of this facility, Avista cannot commit to a specific exit or retirement date at this time, but Avista continues to work toward the optimal exit from the resource,” the utility said in its 2021 resource plan.

Avista seeks input from customers, environmental organizations, business groups, elected officials and utility commission staff when developing its resource plan, which is typically updated every two years.

In February, Avista hosted a public meeting for the 2021 resource plan with more than 150 customers in attendance.

 

PacifiCorp Wind Farm Tied to Facebook's Green Goals Goes Online (Portland Business Journal)

PacifiCorp has brought a Montana wind farm into service, just as Oregon regulators investigate the company’s addition of the resource to help Facebook meets its green ambitions.

The 239.9-megawatt Pryor Mountain wind farm will be added to rates this week, Portland-based PacifiCorp said in a filing Monday with the Oregon Public Utility Commission.

A smaller wind repowering project also went online recently and will be folded into rates. Together, the projects will add 99 cents per month to the average residential customer’s bill, PacifiCorp said.

Regulators late last year found the company’s investment in the Montana wind farm to be prudent. While it could cost ratepayers in the short-term most years, PacifiCorp projects the wind farm should provide a long-term net benefit of at least $57 million.

Pryor Mountain has the attention of the Oregon PUC for another reason these days, however.

PacifiCorp bought the project outside normal competitive bidding rules and brought it online in order to provide renewable energy certificates to Facebook. The social media giant likes to be able to point to specific new projects that help it meet a goal of 100% clean energy for its operations, including the giant Prineville data center complex in Central Oregon.

The commission has raised questions about whether the Pryor Mountain-Facebook arrangement is in the public interest under the fairly loose regulatory mechanism PacifiCorp used, called Schedule 272, or whether more extensive guidelines are needed.

In a February order, the commission capped the use of Schedule 272, apparently putting at risk Facebook’s purchase of the RECs it needs to declare itself 100% green in Oregon.

PacifiCorp and Facebook objected to the cap, and in an order last week, the PUC set it aside. But the commission nevertheless asked staff to deliver a recommendation for “appropriate limitation on an interim basis” for Schedule 272 within 45 days.

In the same order, the commission formally opened an investigation into Schedule 272.

“We expect the investigation into Schedule 272 to determine, as a threshold matter, whether PacifiCorp’s use of this tariff to add a resource to its portfolio for the express purpose of delivering the RECs from that specific resource to a participating customer or customers is in the public interest,” the order said.