Portland General Electric Co. (PGE) said Monday that its recent request for proposals (RFP) for power generating resources, including several hundred megawatts of natural gas-fired baseload power, has resulted in 32 bids from 15 different projects, totaling more than 9,000 MW. Oregon state regulators are scheduled to discuss the draft RFP at a public meeting Sept. 25.

PGE is also developing a second RFP for generating resources seeking approximately 100 average megawatts (aMW) of renewable power. PGE anticipates the renewable resources to be in service to help meet its 2015 requirements under Oregon’s renewable portfolio standard.

The latest bids include benchmark proposals submitted Aug. 1 to the Oregon Public Utility Commission (PUC). The rest of the bids were submitted Aug. 8.

PGE is evaluating the bids and expects to develop a short list of potential projects for negotiation by the end of November. Names of the bidders and other details of their proposals will remain confidential, the utility said. Final selections are expected in late 2012 or early 2013.

In order to meet energy and capacity needs identified in PGE’s integrated resource plan (IRP), the RFP asked for proposals to provide 300-500 MW of baseload resources, approximately 200 MW of year-round flexible and peaking resources, and two seasonal peaking resources: approximately 200 MW of bi-seasonal (winter and summer) peaking supply and approximately 150 MW of winter-only peaking supply.

“The bids received include a mix of projects to be sold to PGE pursuant to asset purchase agreements and projects that would sell power to the utility under long-term purchase agreements,” the utility said. The proposed bids available for PGE to consider in each of the three categories are (and a single generating resource may be included more than once, where bidders submitted multiple configurations using that resource):

For the bids ultimately selected, the flexible and peaking resources are expected to be available in 2013-2015, and the baseload energy resources are expected to be available 2015-2017.

Accion Group, Inc., an independent evaluator hired by the Oregon PUC, is helping conduct the RFP and reviewing bids to assure an open and impartial process. The independent evaluator will also provide an assessment of the bid scoring and short list selection. The independent evaluator will then issue a closing report with a detailed assessment of the process and its results.

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