n other cases, careful analysis may reveal that building a new line is not the best answer. One of the congested pathways the Non-Wires Round Table is examining closely is on the Olympic Peninsula, west of Puget Sound. Demand forecasts show that the existing transmission line running from Olympia to the town of Shelton -- a distance of about 15 miles through forests of Douglas fir and spruce -- may be too small to handle peak heating loads on the peninsula in coming winters. Reinforcing the pathway by clearing a wider corridor, erecting new towers, and stringing up high-voltage cable would cost more than $30 million -- all to provide capacity for a peak energy demand that lasts for only several hours a year. Perhaps it would prove cheaper to exploit generating resources already on the peninsula. Locally generated power wouldn't have to pass through the skinny straw between Olympia and Shelton.

The BPA has several large customers on the Olympic Peninsula -- utility companies, paper plants, a shipyard operated by the U.S. Navy -- that have their own generators. They use these generators only for backup power during emergencies, however, because it's cheaper to buy electricity from the BPA (electricity that comes through the Olympia-Shelton line). But what if the BPA paid them enough to run their generators profitably (or at least on a break-even basis) during the few hours a year when peak demand threatens to exceed the capacity of the Olympia-Shelton line? Lopping the tops off the demand peaks would make a new line unnecessary, at least for a while.

Matt Samuelson is a key player in a Round Table pilot program that is testing this tantalizing possibility. His title is power supply engineer at Mason County Public Utility District (PUD) #3 in Shelton. He supervises a little five-and-a-half-megawatt generating plant fueled by natural gas, which PUD #3 built a few years ago when a shortage of power from the BPA's hydro dams forced the utility to buy electricity from other sources at brutally high market prices. It ran the plant for about 18 months, until higher water levels on the Columbia ended the BPA's shortage. Now the plant sits idle most of the time, so Samuelson and his colleagues at PUD #3 were persuaded to sign up for the pilot project.

The day before the BPA anticipates a big demand peak, dispatchers use a designated Web site to put out a request for generating capacity from customers in the program. It's up to Samuelson to respond to these requests on behalf of PUD #3. "Last Friday," he explains, "the BPA dispatchers put out a bid for Monday, for a four-hour block from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. Let's say they bid $130 per megawatt-hour. But $130 won't cover our costs, so we say we'll do it for $145 a megawatt-hour. If they accept our counteroffer, then we fire up the plant for those four hours on Monday. We don't put the power on their grid; we consume it ourselves. But that's five less megawatts they have to dispatch over their transmission line."

There have been a few glitches, but for the most part, the pilot project has gone reasonably well. The main challenge, as with so much else concerning the grid, is reliability. The BPA's Brian Silverstein explains: "We have to get our dispatchers to feel comfortable that when they call for power from those generators on the peninsula, it will come. They have to be just as confident in the non-wires solutions as they would be if we built more lines."

Enrollment in the pilot project already represents a 22-megawatt reduction in peak demand, "enough to defer the project for a year," Silverstein says. "If you can put off a $25 million capital cost for even a year, that's worth a lot." And waiting, he says, may save more than just money. "Technologies may come along that will make that line no longer necessary."

The Non-Wires Round Table is still fairly new, but it has started to attract attention from other grid operators, planners, and regulators around the country. In the sometimes acrimonious debate about what should be done to prevent a repeat of last summer's grid collapse, it shines as a model of civil discourse and enlightened action. "It's a remarkably collegial group, especially considering the diversity of perspectives," says Mike Weedall, the BPA's vice president of energy efficiency. "You have representatives of large industrial utility customers and investor-owned utilities sitting down with environmentalists and public-utility commissioners," he adds, wide-eyed, as if he'd personally had a glimpse of the peaceable kingdom.

Vickie VanZandt -- one of the chief knights of the BPA's extraordinary round table -- couldn't be more pleased. "It seems like the last few times we've met, there's been magic in the air, like somebody sprinkled a little pixie dust," she says. "We realized that there's hope that we can overcome some institutional barriers and get to the right societal solution -- the solution with the least cost and lightest footprint. I am really optimistic about what we can accomplish in the future. It's going to be a pretty neat journey for us." With the help of forward-thinking engineers like her -- and maybe a little pixie dust -- the grid of the future could be green, like the trees bathed in liquid sunshine just beyond the power lines outside her window.