capacity in the open market after meeting all contractual obligations. WAPA offers four basic types of contracts: long-term firm power and other long term sales nonfirm energy and short-term sales and purchases seasonal power sales and purchase power WAPA sells the generation from dams and powerplants on a project-specific basis. A project may consist of one large powerplant or the combined generation of several powerplants of varying sizes. Although Congress often determines the definition of a project, WAPA has combined projects into 11 rate-setting systems to sell the power and set rates more effectively and efficiently: Boulder Canyon Project Central Arizona Project Central Valley Project Falcon-Amistad Project Loveland Area Projects Parker-Davis Project Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program—Eastern Division Provo River Project Salt Lake City Area Integrated Projects Washoe Project WAPA and its energy-producing partners are separately managed and financed. In addition, each water project maintains a separate financial system and records. Transmission system WAPA owns, operates and maintains a more than 17,000-circuit-mile, high-voltage transmission system that represents more than 10 percent of the transmission lines in the Western Electricity Coordinating Council area. The transmission capacity is first reserved to deliver the contractually obligated hydropower to customers. Any other utility may purchase remaining capacity on WAPA’s system on the Open Access, Same-Time Information System. WAPA’s transmission system includes power lines, substations, power transformers, communication towers, circuit breakers, interconnections and direct-current ties. WAPA personnel both maintain this system and operate balancing authorities, ensuring energy supply matches demand 24 hours a day. WAPA also offers ancillary services to customers to ensure reliable grid operations. WAPA built several parts of the important Path 15 corridor that connects power grids in the Southwest and Pacific Northwest (the rest was privately built by PG&E). Recently, WAPA helped remedy a transmission bottleneck near Los Banos, California. That bottleneck was one of the reasons for the California electricity crisis in 2000-01. Another important transmission corridor WAPA built was Path 66, paralleling Path 15. WAPA also owns and operates many electric power substations like the Mead substation to distribute power within the region. WAPA settled with FERC and NERC for the 2011 blackout. WAPA's customers Various laws, including the Reclamation Project Act of 1939, require WAPA to give preference to certain types of non-profit organizations seeking to purchase Federal power. Preference customers include state and Federal agencies, water and irrigation districts, municipalities, public utility districts, Native American tribes and rural