LAKEWOOD, Colo.—Varying amounts of firm electrical capacity and energy are sought to help offset a lack of hydropower from dams on the upper Colorado River.

Western Area Power Administration, a Federal agency under the Department of Energy, released a request for proposals Oct. 7 outlining the needs of some of its customers for additional power between November 2003 and September 2004.

“Western’s firm electric customers include cities and towns, rural electric cooperatives, Federal and state agencies and Native American tribes,” noted Sam Loftin, from the agency’s Colorado River Storage Project Management Center in Salt Lake City. “A number of these customers have suffered financially because we’ve had to reduce our deliveries of hydropower to them. These reductions are a result of continuing drought conditions in the Upper Colorado River Basin. As a result, these customers are also asking to finance the cost of the electrical energy delivered under this proposal over three years.”

Details of Western’s requirements are posted online at http://www.wapa.gov/crsp/rfp.pdf.

Offers must be received by e-mail, fax or mail by 5 p.m., Oct. 17, to Western’s Colorado River Storage Project Management Center, Attn: L6440, P.O. Box 11606, Salt Lake City, UT  84147-0606, fax: 801-524-6017, e-mail: loftin@wapa.gov.
 
Western markets and delivers about 10,000 MW of Federal hydropower to nearly 700 wholesale customers in 15 states across the West.