Dams, power lines and statistics: What the Bonneville Power Administration is and does

The Bonneville Power Administration was born out of the New Deal, an era of large-scale public works projects that created infrastructure and jobs as the U.S. recovered from the Great Depression. It started to market electricity from the Bonneville and Grand Coulee hydroelectric dams in the 1930s and ’40s. Today, a third of all power consumed in the Pacific Northwest comes from BPA, which owns 75% of the region’s electrical transmission lines.

Eighty-eight years after its creation by an act of Congress, Bonneville Power is widely viewed as both an engine of prosperity in the Northwest, and - at times - an obstacle to environmental goals and economic growth.

Here’s a snapshot of the federally-owned, self-funded agency, what it does and how it got here.

Bonneville Power Administration today

• Dams and other power sources: BPA markets electrical power from 31 federal dams in the Pacific Northwest, as well from a nuclear generator outside Richland, Washington, and several smaller non-federal power sources. The agency markets a third of all electricity used by homes and businesses in the Northwest.
• The grid: BPA operates and maintains 15,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines across Oregon, Washington and Idaho, as well as parts of Montana, California, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. Three-quarters of the region’s electricity gets from the generator to the lightbulb, data center or factory where it’s used by traveling along these power lines.
• Self-funded, federally overseen: BPA’s oversight falls under the U.S. Department of Energy, but the Bonneville Power Administration does not receive federal funds. It pays for its staff and equipment through the electricity it sells and transmission fees.
• A federal workforce: In January 2025, BPA employed about 3,100 people. They include high-level strategists and energy traders, as well as the people who work on power lines, engineers and substation operators who keep the system running.

Historic highlights

• A new idea: The concept that led to the BPA has its roots in the 1920s, when there was growing pressure to move electricity production and distribution from private ownership to public good, according to a history by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council.
• Tribes and salmon: The construction of new dams meant the destruction of many historic tribal fishing areas. Salmon, which evolved to swim upstream to spawn, had their generational life cycles disrupted and blocked when the U.S. government built its dams. For many Northwest tribes, the dams represented yet another destruction of cultural sites and historic foods by a U.S. government that had repeatedly disenfranchised the region’s native peoples, as detailed in the OPB podcast “Salmon Wars."
• Early electrification: In the early days of the electrical grid, dams generated more power than businesses and homes were prepared to consume. Many utilities that got electricity from Bonneville offered rate structures that charged less per kilowatt hour for heavy users. Utilities encouraged people to switch from wood or gas to electric stoves, to install refrigerators and lightbulbs – and to use more power.
• Aluminum and manufacturing: Cheap electricity and incentives to use more were also a boon to industry. The aluminum industry, which uses large amounts of electricity to smelt metals using electrolysis, took note. By the mid-20th Century, 40% of U.S. aluminum smelters were in the Northwest, drawing power they bought at low costs from BPA.
• Salmon and the environment: Since the passage of the Northwest Power Act in 1980, Bonneville has been charged with working to repair the damage its hydroelectric dams have done to salmon that once traversed local rivers. The agency has spent billions of dollars on fish and wildlife programs, but salmon populations have not recovered.
• Enron and an energy crisis: In 2000 and 2001, market manipulation by the company Enron contributed to a power shortage that drove wholesale prices for electricity up significantly. Even after the crisis passed, rates never returned to the lows of BPA’s first half century. Aluminum smelters closed, and other industries that were drawn to the Northwest by cheap electricity also began to look elsewhere.

A future of opportunities and obstacles

• Industry seeks cheap power: New industries have increased the need for electricity in the Northwest - among them data centers, which have been drawn to the region by the relatively low cost of hydroelectricity, much like the aluminum smelters of the last century. That new demand for power brings a need for new transmission lines and a more robust grid.
• Renewables shine: Wind and solar energy are a growing part of the electrical mix. Bringing these new power sources online requires investments in the transmission and distribution system that BPA operates.
• Bureaucracy slows things down: Even as the agency has touted its support for a robust transmission grid and new renewable energy sources, its bureaucratic process for approving new construction has hampered its goals and created a green energy traffic jam.