Columbia Basin Hydropower’s Major Pumped Storage Plans
Banks Lake, Washington.
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24 | MUNICIPAL WATER LEADER
Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position. Tim Culbertson: I have 49 years of utility experience, primarily in the Northwest. I worked for three large investor-owned utilities for 30 years and then worked for 12 years on the public utility side before moving to the irrigation district, where I’ve been for 7 years. I primarily focused on existing hydro projects but also worked to increase the portfolio of hydro projects of the three irrigation districts that make up the Columbia Basin Project. Today, I am manager of project development for Columbia Basin Hydropower. Municipal Water Leader: Please tell us about Columbia Basin Hydropower and its history.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ERIC PRADO.
cross the Pacific Northwest and California, coal- and gas-fired thermal combustion power plants are being retired and replaced by renewable wind and solar power facilities. This environmentally friendly policy, however, is causing a logistical problem. The intermittent nature of wind and solar generation threatens to result in a 7,500–10,000 megawatt (MW) shortfall in power generation capacity. There is only one technology that can reliably address a problem of this scale: pumped storage. Columbia Basin Hydropower is planning a major pumped storage project at Banks Lake in Central Washington with a capacity of 500 MW. In this interview, Columbia Basin Hydropower’s manager of project development, Tim Culbertson, tells Municipal Water Leader about the genesis of the Banks Lake project, the arduous permitting process his agency is now going through, and how the Northwest can address its energy dilemma.
