Southeast Montana News

A bid by NorthWestern Energy to purchase Puget Sound Energy’s 25% share of Colstrip Unit 4 has been altered by Talen Energy, which is taking interest in owning a portion of that share.

“We believe that acquiring a greater share in Colstrip is economically attractive because of the contracted cash flows from Puget's agreement to continue to buy power from the plant for several years,” said Taryne Williams, a Talen spokeswoman, in an email to the Billings Gazette. “Additionally, by giving Talen Montana a greater share in ownership of the plant, it helps to ensure our interests can be fairly represented.”

The Colstrip plant has six owners with an agreement that grants any of them first refusal rights on the sale of shares. This gives Talen the ability to join NorthWest in seeking to purchase Pudget’s share.

Currently, Talen owns 30% of Unit 3, which their website estimates has a capacity of 223 megawatts. The Puget share of Unit 4 comes to an estimated 185 megawatts of capacity.

Units 3 and 4 are the only operational units at the plant, which is operated by Talen Montana, according to the Talen website.

Puget has cited rising coal prices and increasing maintenance costs as motivators for the sale. They also have a 2025 deadline as a Washington-based utility, after which they will be unable to pass any costs on to customers that are coal-power related.

NorthWestern and Talen offered a joint bid to Puget in early 2019, but the Washington utility turned it down based on costs to customers of the deal.

In July 2019, NorthWestern offered another deal without Talen’s involvement that led to a sales agreement being announced in December.

NorthWestern has since told the Montana Public Service Commission that Talen would join the purchase, with the potential Talen could take on as much as 90.5 megawatts of capacity from unit 4.