Guest Opinion | Thinking bigger picture on electricity

The message we as a community have received recently from OPALCO is that we are in trouble related to electricity supply meeting demand on the Northwest Grid. Recent articles in The Orcasonian and The Seattle Times have made clear that a cold snap in January 2024 came close to causing the grid to fail.

Keep in mind, however, that peak demand during cold snaps or heat waves is far higher than average demand. When we are forced to provide capacity to supply demand during peak events, we are essentially overbuilding capacity on the grid to meet demand during events that happen rarely in the course of a year or even five years.

There has been a consistent push for us here in the county to expand energy capacity, as there has been throughout Washington State. Here in the county, this is primarily focused on two solar buildouts, one on Decatur and one on San Juan Island (Bailer Hill), along with a tidal electricity generating machine OPALCO is currently exploring in a feasibility study.

Is building out local capacity really the best approach for San Juan County residents, and for the state as a whole?

We’ve noted in these pages before that building out expensive renewable projects here in the County is likely to raise overall electricity costs for everyone, just like similar projects do elsewhere, in part because of the cost of providing the backup and inertia required for intermittent generation projects like solar and wind. Batteries can provide backup, but only for short periods of time and they are expensive. Tidal is more predictable but cannot supply electricity during slack tide or down times, so also needs backup.

In addition these projects are not consequence-free for either people or the environment, as we’ve discussed previously in these pages.

I’d like to suggest that there are other avenues we should explore in Washington State before we add more expensive and environmentally destructive electricity generation here in the county.

Number one: A recent paper from the Nicholas Institute at Duke University, Rethinking Load Growth, explains how industry curtailment during times of peak load and extreme weather events can significantly reduce the demand on the grid. They found, for example, that a curtailment rate of 0.25% could free up 76 GW—equivalent to 10% of the nation’s current aggregate peak demand—to help the nation’s grids during peak load times. They call this “curtailment-enabled headroom” and it would allow us to easily meet demand throughout the year without adding new capacity.

Number two: A year ago, Sightline proposed that “reconductoring” gridlines—upgrading the wires on transmission lines—in Washington State could improve capacity on 40% of our state’s gridlines and double transmission capacity for “less than half the cost of building new lines.” This reconductoring could make it possible to meet demand at times of peak load without adding new capacity as there is far less electricity waste on such improved lines.

Number three: Washington State has offered tax breaks to data centers for a number of years now, encouraging these intensely high-electricity use industries to set up shop in the state. This is essentially offloading the rising cost of building out new capacity to meet demand and the rising cost of electricity overall from industry to the residents of this state, including all of us. These data centers include crypto-currency mining and artificial intelligence, both uses that are notoriously high in electricity demand. Why should we residents be forced to pay—both in dollars and in costs to the environment—to bring these industrial users of electricity to our state? Data centers do not supply many long term jobs as they are largely automated. The costs far outweigh the benefits. We could, as Washington State residents, repeal these tax breaks or write new laws to make it more difficult for industrial users to come to the state or to force them to curtail their use during peak load times.

Finally, number four: We could put in place a “demand response” program, similar to the one offered by Puget Sound Energy (PSE). The program is designed to decrease load on the grid during times of peak use. The program encourages energy-saving behavior changes by shifting energy use to times of lower demand. We could build on this by helping residents understand how to lower overall energy use for the long term, and encourage people to build smaller homes, to close off parts of their homes that don’t need to be heated or cooled when not in use, to reduce electrical appliances if not strictly necessary, and so on. We could even incentivize these programs by introducing a rate tier structure to force large users of electricity to pay more, and thus, hopefully use less. Personally, I think these residential efforts would be great (especially if we can avoid Tier 2 pricing); better if industry is willing to curtail their own use first and foremost, as our residential electricity use pales in comparison to that used by industry.

OPALCO is required to meet our demand. Of course they are doing everything they can think of, within their power here in the county, to do so. As we see with the controversy over both solar projects and the tidal project, not everyone is happy about expanding electricity generation in the county.

There is a lot we could do if we, as a community, think bigger and act beyond the borders of the county to influence state policies. These actions would potentially have a far greater impact on this situation than anything we can do if we limit our actions to here in the county. I suggest that:

1) curtailment-enabled headroom;
2) reconductoring lines;
3) eliminating tax breaks for electricity-intensive industries; and
4) putting demand-response programs into place, and encouraging overall lower electricity demand are all far preferable to expensive new projects in San Juan County that are controversial and environmentally damaging.

It’s time we think bigger to solve this issue.