The DWP built one of the longest DC power transmission lines in the country to connect Los Angeles with the tremendous electrical generation capacity from the federal dams along the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest. Known as the Pacific Intertie, this line starts at the Celilo Converter Station, above the Dalles Dam, on the Oregon side of the river. The line runs for miles through Oregon and Nevada, then follows the DWP’s Owens Gorge AC line through the Owens Valley. It terminates at a converter station in Sylmar, next to where the Los Angeles Aqueduct spills into the city at the Cascades. The line has a capacity of 3,100 megawatts, enough to meet nearly half of DWPs electrical demand, and has historically been a major source of power for DWP. Currently the line supplies only around 3% of the DWPs power. Most of the electricity from the Intertie is used by other local utilities, such as Southern California Edison.
