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Responses to Congressman DeFazio's Questions by Letter of June 18, 1993 

 Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) Task Force 



Question 1: 



What are BPA's strengths and weaknesses in the resource acquisition field? In 

 particular, is the BPA conservation program acquiring ail cost-effective efficiency 

 and renewable resources? Is BPA on track to acquire the amount of energy 

 efficiency and renewable resources that the Northwest Power Planning Council has 

 targeted for acquisition by the year 2000? Will near-term budget cuts prevent the 

 region from achieving these goals? 



Answer: 



Bonneville's greatest strength regarding resource acquisition is its long and varied 

 experience in this area. Most of the successful conservation programs used in the 

 Northwest were designed and implemented at Bonneville. Even investor-owned 

 utilities use some of our programs, such as Energy Smart Design for new 

 commercial buildings. Another strength is access to records and information, such 

 as the amount of savings for energy conservation measures which allows for 

 accurate program design. 



A program weakness would be the amount of time it takes to draft and implement 

 contracts for resource acquisition. The number of layers involved in the approval 

 process also increases the time involved. However, another of our strengths lies in 

 that we are aware of these weaknesses and are working diligently to streamline our 

 resource acquisition process. Evidence of this is our program efficiency review, 

 the agencywide Function-By-Function Review, and the upcoming Competitiveness 

 Project. 



Bonneville is proceeding aggressively to cut program expenses in both the short 

 and the long term. These reductions involve all acquisition programs, including 

 conservation and generation. However, the cuts are intended to make programs 



