megawatts by microwave
The article chronicles the history of the Columbia River dams, the Bonneville Power Administration, and the Master Grid. It details the BPA's pioneering work in long-distance power transmission, carrier current communications, and protective relaying systems that shaped the modern US electrical grid.
Background
- The article traces the history of the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), a federal agency created in the 1930s to sell electricity from New Deal-era Columbia River dams. The BPA built the "Master Grid," one of the first integrated regional power networks, and pioneered the market structures (power pools, wheeling agreements) that define the modern U.S. electrical grid.
- It then focuses on a specific technical challenge: the communications network needed for "protective relaying"—automated systems that detect faults (e.g., a tree shorting a line) and isolate them without blacking out the whole grid. This required relaying signals between substations miles apart.
- The BPA initially used "carrier current" (phone signals sent over power lines), radio, and leased telephone lines. But as multiple utilities began sharing the grid, the communications demands of protective relaying overwhelmed this 1940s-era equipment.
- Key context: the BPA is still a major force today. Its cheap hydro power attracted energy-intensive industries (aluminum, aerospace) and now fuels the data centers in places like The Dalles, Oregon (e.g., AWS's us-west-2 region).