All models are wrong; some are useful: Forecasting where the power sector is going with Ben Kujala

The power industry’s traditional forecasting models were built for a different world. Newsdata reporter and host Dan Catchpole and co-host Josh Keeling of Cadeo Group talk to Ben Kujala, the outgoing head of power planning at the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, about the 2021 Power Plan and forecasting the future amid tectonic shifts in the industry. They also discuss the fate of the lower Snake River dams.

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NewsData's "People in Power" is an exciting new biweekly podcast that explores issues in the energy industry, featuring expert guests from a wide range of backgrounds. Hosted by veteran energy journalists Jason Fordney and Abigail Sawyer of California Energy Markets and including appearances by writers from sister publication Clearing Up, People in Power will explore trends such as development of a Western wholesale electricity trading market, the transition to a more electrified world of new infrastructure and transportation, renewables integration and reliability, wildfire response and mitigation, and many other topics. "People in Power" draws from an unprecedented pool of expertise and insight in a way never seen before! It's available on all major podcast platforms as well as at www.newsdata.com.

Intro:
Welcome to NewsData's Energy West, a podcast about the energy
industry today and where it's going tomorrow.

Dan Catchpole:
Hi, I'm Dan Catchpole, reporter with NewsData's Clearing Up.

I'm joined with my co-host, Josh Keeling of Cadeo Group.

Today, we're talking to Ben Kujala, the outgoing power planning
division director at the Northwest Power and Conservation

Council. And the council just wrapped up its 2021 Power Plan.

Planning comes out every six years.

It's a deep dive into potential scenarios that are ahead for the
northwest power sector.

There's really no other plan like it that's produced elsewhere
in the country.

This latest version dealt with a host of change that's coming.

Changes becoming bigger and faster than anything we've seen
before.

There's a lot to dive into there.

But first, Josh, how are you doing?

Josh Keeling:
I'm great. I'm good.

Yeah, it's not raining, so I'm happy.

Yeah, let's geek out for a little bit while Ben still has an
excuse to talk to us.

Ben, so you're on your way out the door.

How's that feeling?

Ben Kujala:
I am.

An amazing opportunity came up in Montreal, which is all the way
across the country.

And I'm currently dealing with how you pack up an entire house,
sell it and move things very far and to a different country.

And it's a lot of different details to work through.

Josh Keeling:
I totally get it. I mean, Potato Champ is great, but you can't
beat the poutine up in Canada, so

I totally understand.

Dan Catchpole:
I'm sure it won't be hard at all to find poutine in Montreal,
which is where you're headed.

A couple of months ago, Ben, you announced that you're leaving
the Council to join Dunsky Energy and Climate Advisors in June.

So you're sticking around for a little bit.

You're not just packing up and taking off in the middle of the
night.

Ben Kujala:
There's certainly some things left to be done, but it's kind of
helping Jen get established as the interim director right now

and making sure that we're putting the Council in a really good
spot.

I mean, to be like just a small moment of plugging, the Council
has been a fantastic place to work.

It's a place that I think is really good for the Northwest, and
I want to see it continue to do really well.

And I'm doing everything I can to help make sure that my exit is
well covered and

helping make sure that the Council continues to do the amazing
market it does today, and will continue to do that for a long

time. And frankly, I'm hoping the Council continues to do it
because I'm planning on using their information as much as I can

down the road in whatever work I do.

Dan Catchpole:
You're also stealing as many office supplies as you can before
you have to...

Ben Kujala:
It's all about Post-it notes.

I'm just an entire container full of Post-it notes going to
Montreal.

Josh Keeling:
Sure. Yeah.

And Charlie Grist like memorabilia.

Ben Kujala:
Yeah. French Berets.

Dan Catchpole:
Deep Northwest Power Industry insider reference there from Josh.

Ben Kujala:
Yeah.

Dan Catchpole:
So let's get started.

There's a lot to talk about the power plan, those four dams in
Idaho.

And Josh, where do you want to get started?

Josh Keeling:
I mean, first, I just want to say, like at a high level, Ben,
like almost like a little bit of an exit interview.

Like, what are you going to miss most about the Council, and
where are you absolutely happy to see go?

Ben Kujala:
Well, I'm not sure that I have anything that I'm absolutely happy
to see go.

I know that's kind of a political answer, but it is.

It's true. Like there's a lot of things that are difficult at
times.

But I think that that difficulty leads to really good outcomes,
and it's good to work through it.

The thing I really am going to miss is the number of people that
we work with.

I think one of the best things about coming to the Council after
I worked at BPA was you instantly have a connection to so many

people throughout the region.

You have so many conversations.

You're able to walk in to meetings, whether it's at PNUC or
whether it's a PPC, go visit utilities on site and really

just have really good conversations with the people throughout
the region.

It's really hard at any other organization to have that sort of
broad sense of what's going on and to

make connections between investor-owned utilities and publics.

And all the organizations that kind of work and advocate on the
electric sector for the Northwest.

So I'm going to miss that sort of being at the nexus of all
these different sort of meetings and organizations.

And part of the conversation that's for sure the biggest thing
I'm going to miss.

Josh Keeling:
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I mean, it is a very unique position that the Council has in the
region and just I would say there isn't really a

comparable body anywhere in the country.

So it's got to have been a great experience.

And I'm curious, you know, it's a great time for you to leave
sort of as the plan is wrapping up.

What do you think are like the sort of big lessons out of the
plan that you hope the region sort of takes and moves forward w

ith?

Ben Kujala:
You know, I think, I don't know how to put it into a really quick
kind of one sentence summary or anything like that.

There was so much work throughout the power plan.

But I do think one of the biggest takeaways or maybe a sort of
something that calls attention to

something going on in the industry right now is just that
there's so much change going on right now.

We see the the increase of solar penetration within California.

We see all the legislation that has gone through to require
clean as well as renewable energy for RFPs or other

legislative priorities.

We see a complete headwind to getting any new natural gas put
into the system.

And it's like all those pieces in isolation kind of make sense
to people.

But when you put together the entire puzzle, it really just
shows this massive wave of change going on in the electric

utility industry.

And it's kind of just starting.

It's there. You can already look at the ISOs website and see
Southern California how many prices that diverge from the rest of

the West because of the surplus of solar, California exporting
to the Northwest during the middle of the day, something that has

happened apparently a lot in the last week.

So it's like the early signs are there.

But I think the power plan is saying that they're just that.

They're early signs.

They're early indications and that a change is going to get
bigger and more rapid in the pace that

it's coming on. And so hopefully this power plan kind of — if I
had to summarize it — I guess I would say it just saying "Pay

attention. Things are going to go fast."

Josh Keeling:
Well, that's interesting.

Yeah, I totally agree.

I think it's a really interesting point.

You're seeing this come up with a lot of the integrated resource
plans from some of the IOUs as well, like this balance between

these like long term unsolved issues.

Right. Which is some of the bigger resource adequacy questions,
seasonal storage, sort of long duration outages and

resilience, transmission, everything.

And then some of these short term rapid change that you're
talking about.

You know, we have a lot that needs to happen in terms of just
renewables deployment.

The plan really pointed that out.

It's like gigawatts of renewables just coming out of the system
super fast, demand, response, electrification, all these things

that are happening pretty quickly.

How do you balance those when you're thinking about this?

Because it's, you know, the plan has to consider both.

And that's got to be a really hard thing to grapple with.

Ben Kujala:
Yeah, I guess I find it easier to balance them when I'm thinking
of the region kind of in isolation.

The IRP is coming out here are not that radical.

They don't have such a high hill to climb.

When you look at the rest of the West, when you have California,
that still has 30% of its power coming from a natural gas fleet,

and it's going to be 100% clean.

When you have the desert southwest that's starting to have
similar sort of goals where you're seeing New Mexico or other

places like that passing legislation saying they're moving away
from natural gas.

They're trying to clean their fleet.

You see a much more radical shift.

They don't have the advantage of the hydro system.

They don't have the sort of in-built sort of approach the
Northwest has had to how it's built out its system.

We are not as dependent on thermal as the rest of the West and
certainly not as much as the east.

And so because of that advantage, it doesn't look like it's a
huge shift here.

But we are interconnected to all the people who have to make
these changes.

And I think that was kind of one of the other big findings out
of the plan is if you take them at their word, there's going to

be really large shifts in how they generate electricity and how
they use electricity.

And that's going to have a huge impact on us because we're part
of the same system.

We work in markets, whether they're in California or elsewhere.

You know, the utilities in the northwest are trading energy and
kind of interacting with those utilities.

And if there's a lot of surplus built, because that seems to be
the strategy that people are going towards at the moment,

then that creates a very big wave in the markets that changes
the dynamics in the grid.

Josh Keeling:
Yeah, I mean, that's absolutely true.

I think it also.

It is interesting because you see folks sort of focus really
deeply on one point of that or the other, right?

We see some folks who really want to focus on are we going to
develop SMR, or we're going to develop, you know,

hydrogen. Or what are the long term solutions?

We need to be working on that right now, or we should be pumping
the brakes on some of this deployment.

Whereas other folks are sort of like we need to be scaling more
rapidly, and you have to sort of balance those two, as an

organization. It's got to be very tricky.

I think the power plan has done a really good job of sort of
talking about — I can't remember the language you guys use

exactly — sort of like but scenario planning or sort of like
possible futures.

But can you talk a little bit about just sort of like how you
control that narrative or sort of manage that narrative across

different stakeholder groups?

Ben Kujala:
Yeah. Well, so I guess, you know, I think we're kind of fighting
against our own history there a little bit.

Because in the past, The Power Plan has been seen as a very
robust solution.

It's like there's many different futures out there, but very
similar strategies get you to a good place for those future

outcomes. And this power plan isn't that.

There's many things where we said if you see heavy
electrification, then the strategy that we're putting forward in

the power plan is going to fall short, and it needs to be
adjusted.

And I think that it's hard for people because in the past it is
a pretty straightforward do energy

efficiency, pursue demand response.

You know, if you go beyond those resources, then you might need
to add in something like a gas plant or something like

that. I mean, in the seventh plan, it was a pretty
straightforward strategy.

And, you know, do renewables, but do them up to the RPS
requirement.

And the 2021 plan is just completely different.

It says do renewables, you know, based on what you think the
future's going to be.

The amount of renewables that it saw as kind of optimal in our
models was a very different amount, and there was no really

robust outcome there.

We kind of said at least this much needs to happen, and we put
that in the resource strategy to be clear.

We didn't say build exactly this amount of renewables.

We said at least this much.

But a realistic [inaudible] future where we have heavy
electrification in buildings or in transportation, you need to

have a lot more. And that's going to be, even if you think of
just the northwest in isolation, having to deal with that,

you need a lot more. But when you add that on top of all the
other changes that are going to have to be happening throughout

the West, it's just a complete transformation of the electric
sector.

Dan Catchpole:
And two, to be able to better model that future.

You guys really revamped almost I mean, kind of rebuilt to some
degree from the ground up, yeah, the main model

that you guys use and various other models that factor into it.

That produced some really surprising results.

But so the remodel was trying to take into account the changing
dynamics and to give

a more dynamic view of the future, just considering there's so
many variables that are

affecting the industry, how it operates.

And they're changing rapidly and, so.

I mean. You got some controversial results, but you feel
confident about them.

Are you concerned about buy-in in the, to your point about
previous plans being kind of

having a broader support?

Are you concerned at all about buy-in to the power plan?

This radically different future that is presented in the 2021
Power Plan?

Ben Kujala:
Yeah, I am concerned about buy-in to the plan.

I think that the biggest concern I have is that people will
think because we redid the models, because we're kind of going

down this really sort of ambitious path of trying to do more and
understand more through the models that that we

didn't capture everything that people were expecting.

Or that they'll use that as a way to not worry about the problems
that we're raising in the power plan, thinking that we messed up

or that the models didn't quite capture the dynamics right.

And, you know, I've had now a pretty long career in the electric
sector.

I've dealt with a lot of models.

I'm sure Josh has dealt with a lot of models, too.

And the truth is, no models are ever right.

I always love to use the quote from a statistician Fox, I
believe it was, who says, "All models are wrong, but some are

useful." And the thing that I think was really important that we
went down the path on is that we know the

question has gotten way more complicated than the previous
generation of models are able to deal with.

You weren't able to really get the dynamics of the hydro system
along with this sort of penetration of renewables coming

from outside of our region as well as inside of our region into
a good place with the previous generation of models.

So we had to go at redeveloping it, and doing it in a way that
allowed it to deal with that

complexity. And so I guess I feel like we did a really good job
of getting a model

that is completely based on cloud computing, a completely
basically next generation model up and working for this

power plan. I don't want to say that there's never an
opportunity to improve it.

In fact, I think there are many opportunities to improve on the
modeling side.

Most of those opportunities are about the inputs to the model,
not about the structure of it.

It's about us going dam by dam and talking to people and saying
this is the right amount of ramping that you can do with this.

These are the sort of constraints on this project, and just kind
of getting the fidelity that is needed for kind of the

actual structure to match.

And so I think a lot of people have seen us continuing to work
and continuing to try to do better in this model.

And because it's a new model, you know, the concern is that
because you're still making changes, so they're still

improvement, and they're still new things, and it's not ready
yet.

But every model I've ever worked in, we are always making changes
.

We are always improving.

And I think if you step back from the results that came out of
the redeveloped Genesis, and you just look at the landscape and

you as an analyst, put yourself into the middle of it, that you
see things are going to change.

Things are going to have really big impacts.

And so this model might provide one vision of what that change
means.

What I'm confident in, very strongly confident in, is that the
things are going to change.

Things are not going to be the same where they were in the past.

And so if this model gives you a vision that is very different
than the past, that's probably a good thing.

Is it a perfect vision?

Probably not. It's going to take us more time to continue
working on it and to continue refining it.

But if your criticism of the model is that, it doesn't look like
previous models or it doesn't look like what we've seen in the

region in the past, I think that's actually a really good
selling point for it.

Josh Keeling:
Yeah. No, I think that's probably right.

I think, it seems like we as an industry are struggling with
that a bit in terms of the

increased complexity of the problem space and the amount of
questions we want our models to answer.

Do you see, I mean, both with like future plans and just more
broadly in the industry, do you see a move

towards like making the modeling process bigger, or breaking
the modeling process up into smaller

chunks that are sort of handled separately?

Ben Kujala:
Well, so I have my personal biases on this.

So I would say, I think you can't make a model that captures
everything.

So any effort to try to put everything into one big universal
model is destined to become a mess.

At the same time, I think the complexity of what we've done in
models, we've used a lot of approximations, we use a lot of sort

of simplification.

And those simplifications made sense in the past based on the
system that we were operating, but they don't in the future.

And so we kind of are carrying forward those approximations and
simplifications, and not necessarily thinking about, well, what

does the future look like, and what are the right sort of —
where is it right to have fidelity and where is it okay to have

an approximation?

And it might change because the technology changes and the
underlying grid changes.

And so I think we need to be really thoughtful about that.

But that being said, I think the future of modeling is bigger
models and more complex models.

It's just, if you look at where we are as an industry, we're
behind many other industries that are using

massive amounts of computing power, that are doing everything in
the cloud, that have AI models or machine learning models that

are used to figure out what the next movie recommendation is
going to be for you.

But we can't have that same complexity or intensity brought to
something that is as important as keeping electricity

connected and on through a massive technological transformation.

I honestly think our industry needs to catch up.

Dan Catchpole:
That's an interesting idea about, if you could, to your comment
about the next movie

recommendation, if it's possible to develop algorithms to give
us some insight into where the likely

renewable developments are going to come, which are the most
likely.

But given that we are going into such a radically different
future yet, do you — and we need

to get every ounce of efficiency out of the system as we can
because we've got

to build out huge amounts of generation and transmission.

Do you think the modeling that we have that go into IRPs and the
planning that leads to

actual that forms the basis of investing in actual physical
structures, steel on the ground

when wind turbines, solar, etc..

The models that we have, they're antiquated.

How quickly do you think we can adapt them to so that they're
not kind of holding us back

in the individual utility planning that lead to these
investments?

Or is that not a concern?

Am I making more of it than it is?

Ben Kujala:
It is a concern.

You know, I think we've done our best to adopt models, and
there's some transitional time here.

So I think of, to try to put it in kind of simple terms, that
really what you're doing with a lot of the

sort of dispatch models is a fuel swap.

You're looking for a more efficient gas plant to replace out a
less efficient gas plant, so that you can kind of

make energy with the more efficient plant and and then be able
to back off on the less efficient plant.

And that's what markets are supposed to do, right?

They make sort of transactions that help you facilitate
something like that.

When you get into markets that don't have fuel, our current
energy markets get a little bit

difficult to conceptualize.

And to me, we're not in a market that doesn't have gas plants
yet.

That's still a big part of the Western market.

There's still going to be coal plants operating.

So all of those dynamics still are there and still are part of
the market.

And then on top of that, you have things like the renewable
penetration growing and times in the middle of the day where you

might have a solar flood going on throughout the entire grid.

And really everything backed off to minimum generation and
suddenly fuel constraints are no longer setting the sort of price

of energy. And so for our current system, you've got to have
both.

You still need to understand dispatch based on fuel prices.

Still, and you also need to understand how renewables are
impacting when that dispatch is actually a factor

. In the future, if you go to 100% clean, if you start having
more storage, there's things that could really change sort of the

fundamental approach to how we look at the dispatch of the
electric system.

And in those futures, things have to change.

But you can't go too fast, right?

You can't make that change today and resolve it in models
because today is not there yet.

And so how you blend those systems together as you're going,
because it's not a black and white.

It's not a sudden change.

It is something that is going from one state to another slowly
and kind of in a blended manner to a transition to

a new system. And there's some point in there where the sort of
the emphasis that we've put in on fuel, the emphasis we put on

thermal operations becomes less and less important.

And then kind of, as I said, with the sort of previous modeling
conversation, you're able to make more approximations on that

level because it's less of a factor at the grid.

But that's not today.

That's somewhere in the future.

Josh Keeling:
Well, it raises a big issue that [is] near and dear to my own
heart, which is just how do you start

integrating some of the distribution level or even like
transmission level, just locational factors and just how those

resource, where those resources are, how they're constrained,
how they're operating, you know, based on local conditions, which

can be due to a number of factors, whether it's wires
constraints or the retail business model of the utility or

aggregate that is serving them.

I'm curious, you know, as locational factors or distribution
level factors become more

important, do you see the plan integrating that more or actually
starting to model some of that stuff?

Because the plan right now is pretty high level when it comes to
locational factors.

But it seems like both based on policy and a number of other
factors, that that's going to be more important.

Dan Catchpole:
And if I could add, I mean, like in Idaho, Idaho Power's recent
integrated resource

plan. They took into account like locational factors for battery
adding

storage and that led to in part, I mean that played a role in
their plan

foresees like 800 megawatts of batteries buying those in the
next ten years.

I forget the exact numbers, but like mind boggling.

So I mean it's not just wires but that

granularity, like Josh said, is the plan the power plan high
level that it doesn't matter?

Or, I mean, that made a huge difference though for Idaho Power
so, yeah.

Ben Kujala:
Yeah. You know, I think location matters.

I don't think anyone who who looks at the electric sector, the
power system, the distribution system or the transmission system

can say that location doesn't play a big role in how you put a
system together.

And, you know, again, I think this is kind of one of those areas
where in the past we've been able to put that down to some fairly

big projects and say that this is where you might get some extra
value because of the way the transmission system operates.

And this is a particularly hard place to get resources in or to
get transmission to be able to move power to.

That being said, yeah, as you change the way the system
operates, I think location becomes more and more important.

And so, again, I think it's a spectrum.

You're going from a world where we were able to do a lot of sort
of big central generation solutions and those tended to get the

economy of scale.

And you saw those come in as the kind of preferred approach.

And and even when you got down to something like solar or, you
know, big centralized utility scale solar, usually we had an

economy of scale that made a lot more sense than rooftop solar,
right, on a distribution system.

That still is a factor.

Right? It's still something that you keep track of.

But there might be some opportunities or some local value that
makes it be not one or the other,

because it's a false dichotomy.

It's a false comparison.

Right. It becomes a sort of supplemental for other purposes, for
not just strictly generating power, but for

locational value.

Makes sense to do distribution services here.

It makes sense to put a battery in this substation.

Things like that, I think, are going to naturally become more
and more predominant.

And, you know, the challenge that the Council has always had is
we're not making plans for individual

utilities. And what makes sense, especially on a distribution
system, is an individual utility question, right.

But even on the transmission system, you know, when you're
looking at a broader sort of setup, a IOU especially is

going to need to go to a regulatory structure and say this is a
useful asset for me, for my purposes, for what I need.

You know, they don't need to make an argument about the general
utility to the entire grid.

And so it's hard to.

Josh Keeling:
But it's hard to disentangle those, though, right?

Because, you know, if individual utilities or municipalities or
states are adopting electrification policies

or, you know, you just run into transmission constraints, at
some point.

We're just going to have load pockets where there's no way,
there's no more pipes to get that juice into that area.

Because I don't know about like, sometimes like the value
stacking locational value conversation feels like, oh, we're just

trying to find more warm, fuzzy feelings to justify some
investments.

I'm less sympathetic to that.

I'm more I think it's just from a system perspective, there are
some core assumptions that need to

factor in location, because if a bunch of electric heating
suddenly appears in a specific part of the grid, that affects

everybody's reliability potentially.

You know if PSE's service territory goes down, we're all going
to feel it.

Ben Kujala:
Yeah, yeah, I agree.

And I mean, I think especially as you see batteries built out,
you know, when you're talking about utility scale wind farms or

utility scale solar, like I do think you're going to have some
narrow cases where it makes sense to look on the distribution

system to do rooftop, to kind of have those in a local area,
probably for congestion reasons or things along those lines.

But when you start talking about batteries, there's no need to
go out and find a big empty field in the middle of eastern Oregon

or eastern Washington to put a bunch of batteries in one place.

You can spread them throughout the grid.

You can put them in substations.

You can locate them in a lot of different places.

You might gain some economy of scale or efficiency in being able
to go replace and kind of do maintenance on batteries if they're

closer together. But I don't think it has the same sort of
challenges you see on the renewable side.

Now, right now, the biggest sort of benefit to having

a sort of battery system co-located with solar is that you've
got extra surplus

energy that is not going to make it out, pass the inverter.

You're able to charge those batteries, so the economics of the
current battery installations might not match those sort of

locational values or the future economics of storage.

I do see that that's kind of the first mover, I think.

When you start seeing storage really start to be located in a lot
of different areas, that's showing you that you're really getting

into load growth or getting into a grid that that has some real
constraints and that it's becoming part of kind of operating the

transmission system in moving power is that you're finding ways
to kind of locate storage intelligently.

Josh Keeling:
Yeah, I mean, I think also just like I mean, even if the plan is
not acquiring those resources and saying like these are the, you

need to go get more solar, or you need to go with more storage.

Just factoring in what's going to happen based on like
distribution system plans or IRPs that are coming out from the

utilities. Having those sort of locational baseline conditions,
I think will probably be an important consideration where as you

get into some of these thornier issues.

Dan Catchpole:
Well, you know, I have to ask, though, all the conversations
we're having, right, or this

conversation that we're having right now is premised on the idea
that the supply chain can keep up with all of the

buildout. And, I mean, we're seeing supply chain issues with
batteries and, y

eah I have to think that there's going to...

Well and potentially with solar with the Department of Commerce
now looking into potentially putting tariffs

on solar equipment imports from parts of East Asia, I mean,
they're going to be some serious supply chain

issues. Can we build wind turbines and solar and fast enough to
keep up with the amount that we need to expand, not to

mention transmission and distribution lines?

So for all the modeling you guys did at the council, does it m
atter?

If the supply chain isn't there?

Does it just become are you concerned that this just becomes an
intellectual exercise, and we're

just trying to keep up and barely?

Ben Kujala:
Yeah. So I guess to me, I think it does matter.

Not because supply chain isn't an issue.

I mean, it is.

I think that you kind of end up, supply chain is a timing issue,
right?

Given an infinite amount of time, you can do many, many
different things, right?

And if you're going to a very short time frame and you're trying
to get a lot done, it becomes a bigger constraint.

And so to me, if you look at the plan and you say, okay, there's
no way this much can get built.

And I mean, when you look at the entire West, it is a big
question.

Can we actually build the amount of resources it would take to
meet all the policies that are out there and pass by 2045 or

2050? If the answer in your head is no, this is a supply chain
thing.

It's not going to work.

That doesn't mean that you're not going to that same spot.

It just means that it's going to take you an extra ten years or
an extra five years to get there.

And I guess to me that's kind of why you think of the power plan
in a kind of broad strategy sense.

You don't want to take it year by year or down to a specific
megawatt amount.

If people are going in that direction and they can't retire
things as quickly or if more new load comes on and you need to

keep the resources around longer, in addition to adding
resources, I think that there's many paths for utilities to make

it to that place.

The biggest concern, of course, and the thing that would be very
hard to catch is if you start to see really, really aggressive

electrification and those just grow at a pace that you can't
keep up with in constructing resources.

And I think we're not there at the moment.

I guess it's just a question of, if that happens and you have
supply chain issues, how do you manage it?

Dan Catchpole:
Yeah. I mean, I suppose we have to get there one day regardless,
right?

Because we're transforming the industry and the future is

about non-fossil fuel generation, and so it might take a little
bit longer, but we have to get

there. So actually first I have to ask the line that you quoted
earlier about all models are wrong, but

some are useful.

I think it was right.

Ben Kujala:
Yeah.

Dan Catchpole:
Do you have that as a tattoo?

Because if anybody did, it would be been cool.

Josh Keeling:
Ben and I are going to go get matching ones actually.

Dan Catchpole:
Yeah, you should. You should both down in Portland.

Josh Keeling:
That would be dope, man. I'm in.

I'm in. I was in a DSP meeting recently.

We were presenting on some modeling.

Dan Catchpole:
Wait, what is DSP?

Josh Keeling:
Oh, sorry. Distribution system planning.

And one of the stakeholders was like, well, that result's not
right.

And I was like, "You're right, it's not." It's totally wrong.

Dan Catchpole:
Same thing with every other result that we're showing you.

Josh Keeling:
But it's a decent guess.

Dan Catchpole:
Yeah. So that's how I feel.

Like, that's how I feel about my theology.

I'm probably wrong, but I'm trying to get as close as I can
because, you know, finite

being, trying to wrap my head around the infinite divinity of
...

Anway, I don't know, I'm sorry.

If that was this was just a trick, I'm going to evangelize now.

Ben Kujala:
Yeah. [inaudible]

Dan Catchpole:
So wait. All right. Yeah, we've got to.

Josh Keeling:
Speaking of things that folks want to argue about being wrong
about.

Dan Catchpole:
Yes. There's the transition.

Boom.

Josh Keeling:
Yeah. Let's talk about the Snake River.

Yeah. So Ben, what's the answer?

Ben Kujala:
So I think, look, we've been working on.

Dan Catchpole:
We're going to post your home address for for all the advocates
who want to...

Ben Kujala:
It actually has an expiration date at this point.

Josh Keeling:
Perfect. Yeah.

Ben Kujala:
So, you know, look, I think when we started out, one, we've only
been asked to say, what would it take?

Right. I have not been asked to say go after and start a study
and try to start showing people results and kind of

going through that process.

It's just been a sort of what does it take to do a really good
comprehensive look at what would happen

if you didn't have the power system services from those projects
anymore?

Dan Catchpole:
And before we get too much deeper in this, I just want to set
this up quickly for listeners who are not deep in the...

Lower Snake River dams, four dams that are part of the federal
power hydropower system in the northwest, that are on the lower

Snake River in Idaho.

Lots of controversy about whether they stay or go.

Fish mitigation, salmon, maybe you've heard they're not doing
well.

And they, but the dams provide a lot of uses too: power
generation, recreation, transportation, irrigation, etc.

So Northwest Power and Conservation Council, the council members
asked you guys to consider to come out with a scope

of a study of the first comprehensive analysis of what these
dams contribute to the power system writ

large and what it would take to replace them.

Ben Kujala:
Yeah. And actually, I kind of want to make sure that we're
getting this in a

good context as well.

So we were asked to say, what would it take?

We have the power plan.

We had many comments come up throughout the power plan saying
that the Council should study these particular projects,

and have some sort of opinion or some sort of position or
something that was related to how

they impact the system and what would happen were the services
from them unavailable.

We, looking at what the power act and this is probably getting
too deep into kind of Council structure, but looking at the power

act looking at the way that we kind of conceptualize what we're
supposed to be doing, evaluating whether existing plants should

or should not be removed, is not really the purpose of what we
see a power plant doing.

We often are interested in the risk of if a plant becomes
unavailable or if some sort of strategy goes into place that

really changes the dynamics.

We did a study on early coal retirement.

What happens if throughout the entire West all the coal plants
start shutting down, and they shut down earlier?

That's a risk that we're looking at and wanting to assess.

It's not a policy.

It's not advocating for a particular policy, and so I think
there's a lot of nuance there.

And we could fill up an entire hour talking about the Power Act
and what it was intended to do and how you can look at that

through the modern system.

Josh Keeling:
Sign me up.

Sign me up for that one.

Ben Kujala:
That sounds really fun. I'm sure that that would get a lots of
views for the podcast.

Josh Keeling:
Broad audience.

Ben Kujala:
So but either way, we have this kind of question about what would
it take.

If the Council was going to pursue a study of lower Snakes, what
would it take?

How much kind of, how would we change the approach to how we're
working on the models?

How we're updating things?

What would be the pieces of information we need to go out and
get?

Who would we have to talk to?

And so we have done a lot of work to go back and say this is
what it would take to make this sort of study in a

way that makes sense for the Council, right?

That we bring people together, that we have great amounts of
detail, that we do it in a very open format and let everybody see

down to all the weeds and really get into the mix there.

And so that's kind of what we've been asked to deliver.

In that scope, though, I think I say two things that I like to
put as bookends on this entire analysis and something that kind

of tells you my perspective on these projects.

The first is that they are replaceable.

We have power systems throughout the entire world that run
without having these four projects in that there's many different

ways to run power systems that if you are not talking about the
cost of them, if you're not talking about the cost of

replacement, just is it possible to replace them?

My feeling is from everything that I've ever interacted with,
the answer is just yes.

You can replace these projects.

It's possible to have a system that is just as adequate or more
adequate given the investment needed.

Dan Catchpole:
You're not saying that that's a good idea or not a good idea to
replace them.

You're just saying, look, theoretically, it realistically it is
possible.

Ben Kujala:
Yeah. If money's not a concern, you can replace the projects and
get the system to a place where as adequate or more adequate, so.

Josh Keeling:
That is a hilarious caveat by the way.

Dan Catchpole:
Yeah.

Ben Kujala:
Well, I mean...

Dan Catchpole:
All these results are wrong.

Some are useful.

So what is the useful result that you expect?

Ben Kujala:
I understand that this sounds like a ridiculous bookend, but it's
important to point out that.

Josh Keeling:
Yeah, absolutely.

Ben Kujala:
Often we say because of some services, whether it's reserves,
whether it's sort of flexibility, ability to respond

in extreme temperatures, you know, all the different things that
these projects are currently used for, they'll kind of posit

implicitly that it's not possible to run the system without
them.

And I think it's really important to put on the table a
straightforward like, no, it is.

You know, you have to do something to replace that resource to
make sure that the system is is as adequate or more

adequate, and that once you do that, you can run the system
without having the power output from those projects.

But I think the other side of the argument that people often try
to kind of imply is that that these projects don't provide

enough value to the system to even be noticeable were they
removed.

And I think that just flies completely counter to the entire
theory of power systems.

That if you remove a generator from a power system in isolation,
doing nothing else, it becomes less

adequate. And you you increase the likelihood that you have a
loss of load, whether that's something that

is controlled or whether it's something that is like a power
outage that is made on the bulk electric grid because the

circumstances lead you there.

It's just your increasing the likelihood of it.

And there's no way to take any plant, I mean, in the entire
system out and not

have some impact.

It, I mean, in theory it could be zero if you just built a plant
into a system that absolutely didn't ever need it.

But reasonably.

Josh Keeling:
It would still be a contingency resource.

Ben Kujala:
So you can replace them, but you can't remove them without having
an

impact on adequacy. And that's kind of, you know, so then the
question becomes, if you're going to study it, you know, what

does replacement look like, and what's the cost?

And I think that's what we tried to scope out and kind of say,
if you want to go down this path...

And there's been previous studies on replacement and what it
looks like.

But I think it's important to look at a wide variety of futures.

We don't know what's going to happen in 2050.

So if you can peg exactly what's going to happen between now and
2050, I could give you an exact sort of price for what it would

take to replace the services provided and get back to the same
level of reliability.

But if you don't know for sure what's going to happen, then you
might go into some futures where these things are more dependent

upon, and you might go into some futures where they're less
dependent upon.

And what is the texture of those futures?

What makes it up? That's the interesting piece.

And I think that's what we try to scope is that this is where
the question really is.

It's not if you could come up with a perfect forecast, what
would it take?

Because that's pretty easy to answer.

And I think that there's other people who could put together
something like that.

And if you're going to pretend your forecast is perfect, that's
kind of a single deterministic study of replacement, then that

that will give you a single answer.

But our thing with power plants, the Council's general approach
is the future is uncertain.

You can't just count on every answer being the expected value of
the middle of a forecast.

So that's why we try to scope out something that said, there is
uncertainty and say this is what it would

take. That being said, there's a lot of other things going on.

There's a lot of other priorities the council has.

And they asked us what it would take, but they didn't tell us to
go out and start doing that study.

And so I think that they need to balance the priorities that are
in front of them and make a decision on whether the council

wants to pursue this or does not.

And that's a conversation at the council level.

At the staff level, frankly, we are trying to make sure that we
tell them what the work would be, what it would, what the

implications would be for other work that is ongoing and making
sure that they're fully aware of all of that.

Dan Catchpole:
And it's I mean, it's a big decision for the Council to make.

This is something that the White House has been having
conversations around the region with folks about the future of

these dams, and that is drawing the attention of some the
Republican members of the Northwest congressional delegation.

There's a big spotlight falling on these dams.

And it really feels like these issues that have kind of been
very important to a lot of people in the

region, but kind of below the radar for the general public or it
feels

like these dams are about to really, the future of the dams, is
about to really step onto the main stage

for better or for worse.

Ben, thank you so much for taking time away from packing and
stealing Post-it notes from the Northwest Power

Conservation Council to sit down with Josh and me and talk about
how all of your

answers are wrong, but some are useful.

I feel like I'm going to start telling, any time my wife asked
me a question, I'm going to be like, "Look,

my answers are wrong, but might be useful." So.

And yeah. Let me know when you guys have gotten those tattoos.

Josh Keeling:
For sure.

Ben Kujala:
So. There's three of us in for it then?

Dan Catchpole:
No, no, no. I didn't say, "when you're going,." Let me know that
you've done them.

Josh Keeling:
I feel like we could rope John Owens into it too.

Dan Catchpole:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Now, I'll be really impressed if you get Massoud or like,
Jillian,

Jen.

Josh Keeling:
Jen.

Ben Kujala:
We'll have to see how many people we can move over to it before
Josh and I start figuring out where we're going to get the ink

done in Portland.

Josh Keeling:
Yep, it's going to be great.

Ben, this was awesome talking to you.

You'll be greatly missed.

Don't be stranger.

Dan Catchpole:
Yeah, indeed.

Ben Kujala:
Yea, no. I'll be around.

I'm sure. My scope is increasing a bit more.

So I need to worry about things in the East and in Canada, and
that's really exciting.

It's going to be a lot of new information for me, but I suspect,
you'll still see me around the West on occasion.

Dan Catchpole:
Well, hopefully. And yeah, if I'm ever in Montreal, I'll give you
a call.

Ben Kujala:
Absolutely. Anytime.

And Josh same, like, if you find yourself in Montreal, let me
know.

Josh Keeling:
Absolutely. We'll get poutine.

It'll be great.

Dan Catchpole:
All right. Well, listeners, thanks for tuning in to another
episode of the NewsData's Energy West Podcast.

And as always, you can find us online at NewsData.com and on
Twitter @CUNewsData.

That's the letter C and U NewsData So thanks for tuning in, and
we'll talk to you next

week.

Outro:
You've been listening to NewsData's Energy West, a podcast about
the energy industry today and where it's going

tomorrow.