Learning Center

qualifying facilities (QFs): A designation created by the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 for non-profit power producers that meet certain operating, efficiency and fuel use standards set by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. QFs are small plants, generally 50 MW or less, which usually rely on renewable energy sources or cogeneration.

quartile: The Direct Service Industrial (DSI) customers' load is divided into four quartiles.

rate design: The development of electricity prices for various customer classes to meet revenue requirements dictated by operating needs and costs.

real dollars: Dollars that do not include the effects of inflation. They represent constant purchasing power.

redds: Spawning nests made in the gravel beds of rivers by salmon and steelhead.

refill: The annual process of filling a reservoir; also refers to the point at which the hydro system is considered "full" from the seasonal snowmelt runoff.

region: The geographic area defined by the Northwest Power Act. It includes the states of Idaho, Oregon and Washington; Montana west of the Continental Divide; portions of Nevada, Utah and Wyoming that lie within the Columbia drainage basin; and any rural electric cooperative customer not in the geographic area described above, but served by BPA on the effective date of the Northwest Power Act.

regional transmission group (RTG): A large number of utilities, independent power producers and state agencies join to provide more equitable and easier access to power lines in an area covering many states. The first such RTG was approved May 16, 1995 -- Western Regional Transmission Association. FERC has said it would defer to decisions made by such groups.

regulation: Supervision over rates and major decisions by elected officials or appointees of elected officials.

regulated monopoly: Utility with service area protection.

regulatory compact: Long term set of agreements between regulatory agency and the companies that it supervises (IOUs and Public Utility Commission; and publicly-owned utilities and locally elected officials).

reliability: The ability of the power system to provide customers uninterrupted electric service at their point of service.

renewable resource: A power source that is continuously or cyclically renewed by nature. In the Northwest Power Act, a resource that uses solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, biomass or similar sources of energy.

requirements contract: A power sales contract between BPA and a customer requiring BPA to deliver an amount of wholesale power to meet the customer's firm electric power needs above any other generation the customer uses to meet those needs.

re-regulating reservoir: A reservoir located downstream from a hydroelectric peaking plant which stores the widely fluctuating discharges from the plant in order to release them downstream in a relatively uniform manner.

reserve capacity: Extra generating capacity available to meet unanticipated demands for power or to generate power in the event of loss of generation.

reserves: The electric power needed to provide service to customers in the event of generation or transmission system outages, adverse streamflows, delays in the completion of new resources or other factors which may restrict generating capability or increase loads. Reserves normally are provided from additional resources acquired for that purpose, or from contractual rights to interrupt, curtail or otherwise withdraw portions of the electric power supplied to customers.

resident fish: Fish that spend their entire life cycle in freshwater, such as trout and bass.

residential exchange: An accounting procedure, established in the Northwest Power Act, through which benefits of the Federal Columbia River Power System are passed on to all residential and small farm customers in the region.

restriction: A form of energy curtailment; BPA's exercise of a contractual rights to interrupt power deliveries to Direct Service Industrial customers.

restructuring: Reconfiguring the market structure by eliminating the monopoly on the essential functions of an electric company.

retail utilities: Utilities that sell power to end-users, such as residential customers, businesses and industries, as opposed to power wholesalers -- such as BPA, which sell power to retail utilities for resale to end-users.

retail wheeling: The sale of electricity by a utility or other supplier to a customer in another utility's retail service territory. Wheeling refers to the use of the local utility's transmission and distribution lines to deliver the power.

retrofit: To weatherize an existing structure. Also, the process of modifying an electric generating plant after it is built to improve its performance.

revenue requirement: The amount of funds (revenue) a utility must take in to cover the sum of its estimated operation and maintenance expenses, debt service and taxes. During the rate-setting process, the calculation of the revenue requirement is compared to revenue produced by current rates to determine whether a rate increase is needed, and if so, to determine the overall size of the increase.

river miles: Miles from the mouth of a river; for upstream tributaries, from the confluence with the main river.

run: A general term referring to upriver migration of anadromous fish over a particular time and area -- often composed of multiple individual breeding stocks.

run-of-river plant: A hydroelectric plant which depends chiefly on the flow of a stream as it occurs for generation, as opposed to a storage project, which has space available to store water from one season to another. Some run-of-river projects have a limited storage capacity (pondage) which permits them to regulate streamflow on a daily or weekly basis.