Bulletin Index 1998

We periodically post bulletins here to inform customers of developments within BC Hydro Transmission and/or the industry and/or to solicit feedback on policy changes. These announcements can be time sensitive, so please subscribe for the updates.

Stay informed about our bulletins by subscribing for automatic e-mail notification.

Our Transmission Scheduling bulletins for 1998 are listed below. Select another year in the drop-down to view bulletins from the archive.

Title	Bulletin Date
Final Approval of Tariff Received	January 1, 12:00 a.m.
URGENT - Time Change on NWOASIS	January 1, 12:00 a.m.
WKPL/Cominco Capacity Release	January 1, 12:00 a.m.
New Paths on OASIS	January 1, 12:00 a.m.
Trial Reduction of NWUSA>BC TRM	January 1, 12:00 a.m.
BCHA - 7 day preschedule & staff news	January 1, 12:00 a.m.
Transmission Pricing Policy	January 1, 12:00 a.m.
Pricing Formula Change	January 1, 12:00 a.m.
Mixed Class US to AB Wheels	January 1, 12:00 a.m.
Extension of NWUSA>BC TRM Trial	January 1, 12:00 a.m.

Final Approval of Tariff Received

Posted on January 1 , 12:00 a.m.

BC Hydro received final approval of its wholesale transmission service tariff from the BC Utilities Commission (BCUC) on June 17, 1998. New rate schedules, posted in the documents section of this site, will be effective July 1, 1998. Details of the BCUC decision are available on the BCUC website.

URGENT - Time Change on NWOASIS

Posted on January 1 , 12:00 a.m.

With respect to the upcoming time change, when making requests on OASIS, for any start or end date/times between April 5, 1998, 03:00 and October 25th, 1998, 02:00, please enter a time zone of PD. If you select PS you will receive an error message from OASIS. This will be especially important to those of you who have files created by other software which you upload to OASIS. For April 5th itself, please enter the first two hours 00:00 to 02:00 in PS and the remaining hours 03:00 to 00:00 April 6th in PD. Do not enter anything for the hour 02:00 to 03:00 in any time zone. If you are submitting a request for Hourly service for the whole day and use the "Edit Profile" button, it will display correctly for you. Hopefully I've explained this OK, but, as always, call if you have any questions.

WKPL/Cominco Capacity Release

Posted on January 1 , 12:00 a.m.

Cominco and WKPL have provided Grid Operations with written permission to release all but 25 MW on LLH of their grandfathered import transmission rights until the end of June 1998. This unused capacity will be included in the applicable hourly, daily, weekly ATC postings on Saturday, June 6th, 1998. This is an exception to our usual business practice of only including the released capacity at about 10h00 on the preschedule day. This release does not imply similar releases will be made in the future.

New Paths on OASIS

Posted on January 1 , 12:00 a.m.

On Monday, August 17, 1998 the following new paths will be available on OASIS for service beginning August 18, 1998: w/BCHA/BCH>WKP/Internal/ ; w/BCHA/WKP>BCH/Internal/ ; w/BCHA/WKP>WKP/Wheelthru/ ; w/BCHA/AB>WKP/Wheelthru/ ; w/BCHA/WKP>AB/Wheelthru/ At this time, TTC and ATC will not be posted to the first three paths. BC Hydro Grid Operations does not experience scheduling constraints on these paths and thus decided to make them available in advance of completing studies to determine TTC.

Trial Reduction of NWUSA>BC TRM

Posted on January 1 , 12:00 a.m.

Beginning Tuesday, December 15th (prescheduled Monday), BC Hydro & BPA will be reducing the Transmission Reliability Margin on the NWUSA>BC path from 100MW to 50MW for a two week trial period. This change will be reflected in our hourly and daily postings. Based on results of the trial, we may adjust our nominal value to something other than 100MW.

BCHA - 7 day preschedule & staff news

Posted on January 1 , 12:00 a.m.

For those of you who have not yet heard, BCH Grid Operations has, with start-up of the California ISO, begun a 7 day preschedule operation. With respect to our tariff and business practices, a "Working Day" is now every day, and the "Normal Preschedule Day" is now one day before the day of interest. Please note that this impacts when some transmission services are sold; for example, hourly transmission for saturday is no longer for sale today. One exception to this is Hourly Firm reservations made by WKPL under a grandfathered agreement; these reservations will continue to be identified with a note of '"L71" in the comments field. With respect to energy scheduling, we will continue to accept energy schedules on the "5 day plan." Please be aware, though, that we will be doing control area checkouts with BPA on a 7 day basis, so schedules submitted to us on Friday for Monday will not be checked-out until Sunday. For any problems we encounter on the weekend, we will call the "real-time" number we have for you, unless you advise us otherwise. Note to NRTA members: we will use the info recently collected by NRTA. In related news, we are pleased to announce the hiring of two new transmission preschedulers, Bonnie Mitchell and Maria Chalkias. Bonnie has been with us for about a month now and many of you have already spoken with her; Maria will be starting with us in a couple weeks. In addition, we are happy to report that Kate Armstrong, previously here on a temporary assignment, has joined the department on a permanent basis. Kate will be assuming the role of Transmission Scheduling Manager, so you can expect to see some Grid Ops news coming from her as well as from me.

Transmission Pricing Policy

Posted on January 1 , 12:00 a.m.

Effective immediately, the price for transmission service to load Points Of Delivery (POD) in the BC Hydro system will be at embedded cost rates (tariff maximum), currently $5.3/MWh. This policy has been adopted to ensure that transmission service to loads in BC served from the BC Hydro system all pay the embedded cost of the transmission system. This policy does not affect any arrangements under grandfathered agreements nor does it affect Network Integration customers arranging "Network Economy" imports. As a result of the new policy, the price for firm and non-firm ATC on the NWUSA>BC and Alberta>BC paths will be posted at embedded cost. This will be the price for service on these paths with one exception: we will have a standing offer to discount to the "going rate" (COB-AECO formula) for customers returning losses on these paths. Please use the "BCHA Network" POD when requesting service on the import path to return losses. Please use an alternate POD for any other requests on these paths. The "going rate" can be seen by querying any of the Alberta>NWUSA, NWUSA>Alberta, BC>Alberta, or BC>NWUSA paths.

Pricing Formula Change

Posted on January 1 , 12:00 a.m.

Effective July 31, 1998 (for August 1, 1998) we will be making a small change to our discount transmission pricing (COB-AECO) formula. We will be changing the proxy heat rate multiplier (value used to convert AECO to $/MWh units) for LLH from 10 to 5. This is being done to more accurately reflect how much electricity would be generated by an equivalent natural gas generator in Alberta in LLH. The only change to our postings that will result from this switch will be that some prices may be different from what you currently expect or forecast.

Mixed Class US to AB Wheels

Posted on January 1 , 12:00 a.m.

On Monday, November 30, 1998 Grid Operations will implement a scheduling policy for customers interested in "mixed class" US to AB wheels beginning December 1, 1998. This policy will be of interest to customers wishing to preschedule a firm US to AB wheel and willing to accept non-firm service on the BC to AB leg. A copy of the policy is available in the Documents section of this site.

Extension of NWUSA>BC TRM Trial

Posted on January 1 , 12:00 a.m.

Based on positive results to date, the NWUSA>BC TRM Trial announced on December 11, 1998 will be extended to January 31, 1999.