98 



to take the remaining 200 megawatts of its load off as quickly as 

 it can. 



Clark County is going to build a turbine within its own service 

 territory. Clark is interconnected on the eastern side of the county 

 with PacifiCorp. 



If we try to levy the stranded investment charge on the trans- 

 mission system, Clark could be in a position where it could take 

 all of its load through PacifiCorp, and build a resource within its 

 own service territory to take its load to zero. 



So Bonneville could not collect such a change on the power side, 

 and could not collect it on the transmission side. I am not sure 

 where it could be collected. 



Roughly 50 percent of our preference customers are served not 

 directly by Bonneville, but by transfer agreements through neigh- 

 boring investor-owned utilities. A whole chunk of our load could 

 easily avoid the so-called wires charge, and that is the most fre- 

 quently talked about mechanism. 



All that being said, if that is the direction the delegation would 

 ultimately want to go, we obviously want to work with you to do 

 whatever is needed. I would say if that were deemed to be the di- 

 rection such a charge would have to be very broad based, so it 

 could attach to virtually any transaction that Bonneville would do 

 with an entity. 



I think you can predict how this would characterize it as a heavy 

 regulatory approach, which would produce a reaction among cus- 

 tomers. 



If they were not going to act like Clark County before we did 

 that, they certainly would be highly motivated to act like that after 

 we did it. 



Senator Hatfield. I have heard comments made publicly that 

 Bonneville could sell its power anyway. They are not going to sit 

 around and try to find a way to store surplus power. Comment on 

 that, would you? 



Mr. Hardy. We can sell our power, but the question is at what 

 price can we sell it? 



Senator HATFIELD. What price? 



Mr. Hardy. Sell it for, right now. 



Senator Hatfield. What would happen to the 27 mills? 



Mr. Hardy. Our estimate is that in the current market we would 

 be, to the extent a customer leaves our system, forfeiting a 27-mill 

 sale for something that is more in the 15- to 20-mill range on the 

 spot power market. 



To give you some idea of what the cost hit is with that differen- 

 tial, for every 50 megawatts of power that leaves our system, we 

 would lose $3 million to $5 million. 



So, for example, if Clark takes all 400 megawatts of its load off 

 of our system, Bonneville is looking at something that is in the $25 

 million to $40 million range. We currently have 



Senator Hatfield. But only on a spot market. 



Mr. Hardy. That is right. We currently have requests pending 

 from a total of six customers to offload almost 500 megawatts from 

 our system. 



That is a $30 million to $50 million cost hit, if that were allowed 

 to occur, or if that, in fact, does occur over the next year or two. 



