Mike,

No. Neither Seattle City Light nor Puget Sound Energy publish advance generation plans. First, if they had them, it would be proprietary information that they wouldn't want to share with their competitors. Second, they constantly make changes in energy generation and purchases according to instantaneous market conditions. Having said that, however, they do follow some general approaches based on water supply and any fish protection flow requirements.

PSE has been using a generation/flow strategy to try to avoid a repeat of the drastic 2001 dewatering of salmon redds that occurred. Because the reservoirs are full at the end of the summer recreation season from the spring/summer snow melt, PSE begins drafting the reservoirs just prior to significant chinook spawning in mid-September. Then they are trying to hold flows low during the chinook spawning period until mid-November. This helps prevent having chinook salmon spawn at higher elevations due to Baker flow contributions that cannot be sustained through the egg incubation period. However, all that rain in the first half of September interferred with plans, and now they are generating in short spurts to get rid of extra water, without keeping the river high long enough for chinook to key in on the higher flow and spawn at those higher elevations we want them to avoid. You can probably expect this pattern to be followed until PSE gets the Baker reservoirs down to the desired level for this time period. Sorry if that is what is putting fish off the bite.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.