WECC 101

The Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) is a non-profit corporation that exists to assure a reliable Bulk Electric System in the geographic area known as the Western Interconnection. WECC has been approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) as the Regional Entity for the Western Interconnection. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) delegated some of its authority to create, monitor, and enforce reliability standards to WECC through a Delegation Agreement.

About WECC

The Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) is a non-profit corporation that exists to ensure a reliable Bulk Electric System in the geographic area known as the Western Interconnection. WECC has been approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) as the Regional Entity for the Western Interconnection. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) delegated some of its authority to create, monitor, and enforce reliability standards to WECC through a Delegation Agreement.

Environmental and Cultural Considerations

WECC explores ways to transform land, wildlife, cultural, historical, archaeological and water resource data into a form useable in System Adequacy Planning. The ability to visualize land data and analyze that data to reveal relationships, patterns and trends is important in determining where to place new transmission. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data is an input to WECC’s Long-Term Planning Tool (LTPT). Environmental, cultural, risk and terrain data are captured in GIS data as inputs to the LTPT. Transmission paths are geospatially optimized within the LTPT. The goal is to minimize the cost and impacts (e.g., environmental, financial) of building new transmission paths.

NOTE: The Cultural Data Viewer includes the same content as the Environmental Data Viewer plus additional cultural resource-specific data. User information is required to access the Cultural Data Viewer. Both tools require the use of Chrome or Firefox web browsers.

Launch Environmental Data Viewer Launch Cultural Data Viewer

Environmental Data Viewer Introduction Video