Idaho Power's B2H transmission line faces continued delays

Business Journals

22-04-2025

When Adam Richins gives presentations about Idaho Power's efforts to build the Boardman to Hemingway power line — B2H as it's known — he'll sometimes include a baby picture of his son Sam.
"He was born in 2007, which is when B2H was essentially born," Richins, the utility's chief operating officer, says. Now, Sam is "a man, bigger than I am."
B2H, though, remains unbuilt, still slogging through seemingly endless regulatory thickets.
The 290-mile power line mainly in northeastern Oregon is a key piece in Idaho Power's plan to reliably meet rising demand with clean resources. The company owns 45% of the project and is leading its development. Portland-based PacifiCorp, which owns the other 55%, has positioned the line as part of enhanced connectivity between the western and eastern portions of its six-state service territory. Bonneville Power Administration plans to use the line to serve customers in southeastern Idaho.
Poster child for power-line roadblocks
But right now B2H is the poster child for the challenge of building transmission lines amid widespread agreement on the need for expansion in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere.
The Oregon Supreme Court late last month turned aside a challenge to an amendment to B2H's state site certificate — as it had a challenge two years ago to the original site certificate.
Now, though, the project is awaiting sign-off on documents and reports related to the National Historic Preservation Act.
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Adam Richins, chief operating officer, Idaho Power
Idaho Power
"They've had multiple reviews time and time again, and we still are in a position where we're going to have months of delays," Richins said. "We're probably hoping to break ground this summer if they can get these documents reviewed. And then we can go forward once and for all with breaking ground."
A spokesperson for the Bureau of Land Management, the lead federal agency on the project permitting, told the Business Journal that "compliance with regulations that protect cultural resources continues to move forward in partnership with BLM, IPC, Tribes, the Oregon and Idaho State Historic Preservation Office and other consulting parties."
Idaho Power's best-case scenario now is to have the line completed before the end of 2027.
The 500-kilovolt B2H line would offer a new connection between the Pacific Northwest and the Intermountain West, running mostly through Oregon on a route between a new substation near Boardman, in Morrow County, and one near Melba, Idaho.
Idaho Power is also involved in other significant regional projects, as is PacifiCorp.
The projects are all about opening up corridors to move energy — including Washington and Oregon hydropower, Wyoming wind power and Great Basin and Desert Southwest solar — from where it's produced, to where it's needed, when it's needed. New transmission and "grid-enhancing technologies" applied to existing lines are seen as increasingly needed to meet rising demand, especially with intermittent clean resources.
PacifiCorp's plan with B2H
PacifiCorp has long included B2H in its biennial resource plans, although in a twist, it dropped the line from its "preferred portfolio" in its recently released 2025 Integrated Resource Plan. At an Oregon Public Utility Commission meeting last week, PacifiCorp officials said they did so because they learned that it faced delays in acquiring rights from Bonneville to redirect power from a new substation called Longhorn that is the terminus of the B2H line near Boardman.
But it turned out that an unnamed "specific local customer" — the area is rife with data center and renewable energy development — could get to Longhorn and use the B2H path. So the line wouldn't be used to serve existing customers, and thus they wouldn't be billed for it.
"So we've removed (B2H) from this (IRP) and are pursuing its construction, its arrangements, the cost of that facility, through a process outside of the IRP at this time," Rick Link, PacifiCorp's senior vice president of resource planning and procurement, told the PUC. "It does not mean that we're assuming the line doesn't get built. We're actively pursuing the things needed for that to be successful, as we speak."