Over the top in wind power in Oregon

Oregon's Portland General Electric can now generate over 1 GW of wind power, thanks to the start-up of the 311 MW Clearwater Wind Project in Montana that PGE is involved in with NextEra Energy Resources

By Paul MacDonald

The Integrated Operations Center for Oregon-based Portland General Electric (PGE) looks like something akin to the control center for NASA—huge wall-mounted screens and a giant wall-sized screen monitor the flow of power for the utility, which serves approximately 950,000 customers. This includes residential, commercial, and industrial customers in 51 cities across Oregon, in a service area with a population of 1.9 million people. 

Last year, and several dozen times since, the Operations Center has seen a significant milestone—PGE receiving 1 gigawatt (GW) of wind power from a collection of wind farms in the western U.S.

What put it over the 1 GW top, though, was the start-up of the Clearwater Wind Project in Montana that PGE is involved in with NextEra Energy Resources—and since then, PGE has hit the 1 GW mark more than 20 times, including an all-time high of 1,056 MW. That is enough power to meet the needs of all of PGE’s residential customers.

“We’re incredibly proud of hitting that 1 GW mark,” said Lee Recchia, Senior Manager of Grid Operations for PGE. He added that the utility has since hit the GW mark some 26 times since.

To put that number in perspective, one gigawatt of wind power is enough to power 10 million 100-watt bulbs. A GW is enough to power more than 50 million cell phones—simultaneously. Or more than 300 hospitals. You get the picture.

PGE staff in the Operations Center watched the monitors as power from the new Clearwater Wind Project came fully online, gradually at first, and then punching in with PGE’s full 311 MW from the project, from 112 GE wind turbines. It was supplying almost 30 percent of the total PGE wind generation.

“I was able to watch as Clearwater came fully online—it was great,” says Recchia.

Clearwater Wind spans three counties—Rosebud, Garfield and Custer—on the vast plains of eastern Montana. The Clearwater project totals 750 MW, and 208 MW of the project is owned by PGE, through a build-transfer agreement, and the remaining 103 MW is delivered
to the utility under a power purchase agreement with NextEra. The project interconnects to the main grid at an existing substation via a new 345 kV transmission line.

For PGE, the Clearwater project is a continuation of the company’s focus, and history, of renewable power. Founded in 1888 as the Willamette Falls Electric Company, it has long been involved with generating power from hydro facilities—and some 26 percent of its power now comes from hydro plants in Oregon. Currently, about 15 percent of its capacity comes from wind power, and four percent from solar power. But PGE has committed to being 80 percent decarbonized by 2030, and 100 percent by 2040. Oregon legislation requires utilities to phase out all coal powered plants by 2030. The Clearwater project is the latest advance, in a series of renewable energy initiatives, towards achieving those benchmarks.

And it is also a good fit for PGE in several other ways.

Recchia explained that until several years ago, PGE was a winter peaking operation, but with changes in the market, it is now a summer peaking operation. “The market is changing, and our system is responding to that, and we are evolving—and part of that involves more renewable power.”

	Clearwater Wind spans three counties—Rosebud, Garfield and Custer—on the vast plains of eastern Montana. The Clearwater project totals 750 MW, and 208 MW of the project is owned by PGE, through a build-transfer agreement, and the remaining 103 MW is delivered to the utility under a Power Purchase Agreement with NextEra Energy Resources.

The wind power that they receive from Pacific Northwest wind facilities has a pattern, but the power from Montana’s Clearwater Wind project, some 1,000 miles to the east, has another wind pattern. “Montana has constant wind, so that has really helped us,” he explained. “It gives us more geographic diversity, and diversity of power supply.”

The flat, open land of eastern Montana makes it ideal for a wind power project—the wind here has a much higher capacity factor because it flows faster and more frequently than the wind in the Columbia River Gorge, where PGE gets some of its other wind power. The Clearwater project has a 45 percent capacity factor, considered very high, and delivers higher levels in the winter and summer. And it blows at a different time daily, from the other wind projects.

“Also, we were able to bring the power to PGE in Oregon using existing transmission lines that we already had to some projects in Montana—so we can save our customers money because we can move that new wind power without having to build new transmission,” explained Recchia.

The flat, open land of eastern Montana makes it ideal for a wind power project—the wind here has a much higher capacity factor because it flows faster and more frequently than the wind in the Columbia River Gorge, where PGE gets some of its other wind power.

The project is about 65 miles northeast of the Colstrip coal powered plant in Montana, part of which was shut down in 2020.

Most of the 1,000 miles the Montana wind power now travels is on that existing power line—only 100 miles of new line had to be built, to connect the wind project with the existing major Bonneville Power Administration transmission main line.

Transmission is a huge issue in the U.S. these days. It’s been estimated that more than 2.6 terawatts (TW) of clean energy projects are languishing in an interconnection traffic jam.

To put this in perspective, this far exceeds the 1.25 TW of electricity generation on the grid. Building new transmission capabilities is expensive, and it can easily take years for approvals. So using existing transmission, as with Clearwater, was a huge bonus for PGE.

That said, the decision to join with NextEra on the wind project still went through a Request for Proposals process, a model that PGE follows with many of its generation projects. The RFP was drawn up as part of the utility’s Integrated Resource Plan, which maps the future power needs of its customers. NextEra’s proposal was accepted, with a firm timeline of power deliveries beginning in early 2024.

	The start-up of the Clearwater Wind project in Montana put Oregon-based PGE over the top, as it is now receiving 1 gigawatt (GW) of wind power from a collection of wind farms in the western U.S. Since the start-up of Clearwater Wind, PGE has hit the 1 GW mark many times, including an all-time high of 1,056 MW.

“We work closely with development partners to make sure projects are going to hit our timeline, to make sure we are able to get the power our customers need on time,” says Recchia. “These projects are all about successfully getting the power home, to Oregon.”

The 750 MW project came on in four phases, with the PGE portion being the final phase.

Going forward, project developers and utilities could find it a challenge to find projects such as Clearwater, with existing transmission lines to fossil-fueled plants perhaps not coming available as planned, as the plants’ closures may be rescheduled.

Looking out over even the next few years, it may be difficult to find sites with existing transmission links, says Recchia.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) expects 25 GW of coal retirements and 15.7 GW of natural gas retirements through January 2028, presumably opening transmission capabilities for both wind and solar power.

But investments in wind and solar projects may be affected by President Donald Trump’s decision to extend the life of fossil fueled facilities and promote coal. He has extended some environmental regulations covering coal powered plants, and signed an executive order to expand the mining and use of coal in the U.S.

PGE was able to bring Clearwater Wind power to Oregon using mostly existing transmission lines that it already had to some projects in Montana; it only had to build a small amount of new line to connect the Clearwater project power to an existing transmission main line.

So, coal powered plants that utilities, in drawing up their long term plans, thought might be retired, might not be—and that transmission capacity is thus not available for moving wind or solar power.

The grid interconnection models of utilities assume that retiring coal plants free up transmission of solar and wind to come online. Solar and wind projects can have siting agreements in proximity to planned-to-be-retired coal plants and are relying on the transmission associated with the coal plant. If a number of coal-fired plants remain in operation, a significant amount of wind and solar projects could be affected.

The Clearwater project is in part using freed capacity on transmission lines from the two decommissioned coal-fired Colstrip plants in Montana that stopped operating in 2020.

One estimate is that roughly 50 GW of coal capacity that was planned for retirement may stay online now, perhaps pushing out demand for wind and solar power.

Such political decisions are out of the control of utilities like PGE. What is in its control is being able to share renewable power with other utilities. PGE is now part of the California energy imbalance market.

“What that does is give us access to a larger grid, partnering with other utilities, and getting access to more renewable power—and more economical power,” says Recchia.

PGE was the fifth western utility to participate in the western Energy Imbalance Market (EIM). The EIM effectively uses low-cost energy available in the region to meet changes in real-time energy demand—in addition to carbon-reductions achieved through efficient dispatch of renewable resources. Those savings are projected to increase as more utilities join the market.

The real-time energy market supports its participants by offering access to low-cost energy regardless of its location, a tool to help meet clean energy goals and boost grid reliability.

The EIM uses state-of-the-art software to analyze regional grid needs and make available low-cost generation to meet demand every five minutes. Participating utilities save money by drawing automatically on the least-cost generating option available to meet short-term variations in their customers’ power use. This also allows participants to maximize the use of renewable resources, by making it easier to take immediate advantage of available wind and solar generation anywhere in the system while efficiently integrating their variable output with other, dispatchable resources. 

PGE was among the first utilities to join the EIM, and now there are 28 member companies, giving PGE a lot of partners with whom they can swap power, including renewable energy.

“There were benefits to joining right from the beginning, but the benefits continue to grow as more companies, from Tijuana to British Columbia, join,” says Recchia.

Like the wind power projects the company is involved with, such as Clearwater, belonging to EIM allows the utility to source power when it’s available from a variety of locations, and resource types—and sell its own power into that market, as well.

Being part of EIM is considered a win-win for everyone, including PGE and its customers, says Recchia.

“With more renewables coming online in the U.S., and a shortage of transmission, belonging to EIM is a significant benefit,” says Recchia.

Q3 2025