HB1192 – Improving electric power system transmission planning.
Prime Sponsor – Representative Duerr (D; 1st District; Bothell) (Co-Sponsor Doglio – D) (By request of the Governor.)
Current status – Had a hearing in the House Committee on Environment & Energy  January 19th. Replaced by a substitute matching the changes made in the Senate’s companion bill and passed out of committee February 13th. Referred to Rules.
Next step would be – Action by the Rules Committee.
Legislative tracking page for the bill.
SB5165 is a companion bill in the Senate.

Substitute –
The substitute specifies that projects with nominal ratings of at least 500,000 volts AC or 300,000 volts DC have to seek Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council certification, and that projects that aren’t subject to the Council’s jurisdiction still have the option to use local government permitting processes. It clarifies that transmission assessment in an IRP has to include opportunities to make more effective use of existing transmission capacity through improved operating practices and non-wires solutions, and that a clean energy action plan has to document a utility’s efforts to use existing capacity more effectively.

Summary –
The bill would require the assessment in each utility’s integrated resource plans of its future needs for regional generation and transmission capacity, and of the availability of those, to be based on forecasts over twenty years rather than ten. The assessments would have to take into account the state’s emissions reduction limits and the requirements of the Clean Energy Act; opportunities to make more effective use of existing transmission capacity through energy efficiency, demand response, grid modernization, and other programs; and the electrification of transportation and other end uses historically met using fossil fuels. The assessment would have to identify the utility’s expected need to develop new or expanded bulk transmission facilities.

The bill would expand the current requirement for developing 10 year Clean Energy Action Plans to include all utilities, not just investor owned ones. Those plans would now also have to document existing and planned efforts by the utility to secure the additional transmission capacity it anticipated needing in its IRP. They would have to give reasonable consideration to energy resources that would use conditional firm transmission services, where their reserved service might be curtailed under specific limited conditions. Utilities would be encouraged to do statewide, multiutility, and interstate transmission planning. They’d be required to seek the support of a variety of industry and public interest organizations in improving the planning and development of transmission capacity.

The bill would add the construction, reconstruction, or enlargement of new or existing electrical transmission facilities of at least 500,000 volts; located in more than one county; and located in the Washington service area of more than one retail electric utility to the facilities required to apply for siting through the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council. The bill would have the Director of the Council coordinate state agency participation in environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act of transmission projects proposed or sited by a Federal agency .