The circular latitude that runs through the Pacific Northwest is known as the 45^th Parallel North.  It gets its name since it sits 45 degrees north of the Earth’s equator and is known as the halfway point between the equator and the North Pole.  If you look at a map, the 45^th Parallel flows through the middle of Oregon and Idaho before making it over the Rocky Mountains.  A little known fact about the 45^th Parallel flow is that it makes up most of the Montana/Wyoming border.  In the electricity sector, the Parallel Flow is a common term understood by people in the transmission business but the common folk in the electricity development and market space don’t think of much, if ever. The term parallel flow has bubbled up to the 212^th degree and is a hot button issue in EDAM market design, which is coming to a head as PacifiCorp seeks approval for its EDAM tariff. Why this issue and why now?.........

Figure 1 | 212th Parallel (Flow)