OPALCO meets with County Council: Energy supply will not meet demand

What’s our energy future going to be?

||| FROM KRISTA BOUCHEY for ORCAS POWER & LIGHT COOPERATIVE |||

The OPALCO team attended and presented at the San Juan County Council meeting on February 10. The team outlined the dire situation that the regional power supply is facing. Our shrinking regional power supply and increasing demand is leaving our local community vulnerable to price shocks and blackouts.

OPALCO and the County need to work together to ensure that the essential service OPALCO provides remains reliable. OPALCO outlined why we should be considered an essential public facility and asked the County to expedite review of the land use tables to ensure that OPALCO can have permittingcertainty.

OPALCO Board President, Vince Dauciunas stated in his intro to the County Council, “For over a century, the electrical grid has been designed around predictable, dispatchable power sources—hydropower, coal, natural gas, and nuclear. These resources can ramp up or down as needed to match demand in real time. Utilities maintain reliability by balancing generation and consumption every second of every day. The transition to renewable energy fundamentally disrupts this balance because wind and solar, while clean, are variable—the sun sets, the wind dies down.

Unlike a hydro dam or a gas plant, they don’t produce power on demand. This isn’t just a technical challenge—it’s an economic and land-use challenge as well.”

Local, renewable generation can help protect the community from price spikes and vulnerability to blackouts. This will require the community to invest in generation, transmission, and storage. OPALCO and San Juan County will need to work together to find a solution for updated land-use policies for energy security, cost controls, and to meet state mandates.

“We can’t wait until things become dire before starting to take action. We need to install local, renewable power now to fulfill OPALCO’s mission to get our members affordable and reliable power now and into the future,” states OPALCO General Manager, Foster Hildreth.

OPALCO also presented the option to utilize Public Works land on Decatur Island to site a solar project for the $1M grant from Department of Commerce to benefit low-income residents in San Juan County. Jessica Hudson, County Manager and Colin Huntemer, Public Works Director have been really helpful in working with OPALCO to be able to utilize these funds for our community. The OPALCO team is appreciative of this opportunity to partner with San Juan County to benefit the low-income community.

Orcas Power & Light Cooperative (OPALCO) is our member-owned cooperative electric utility, serving more than 11,400 members on 20 islands in San Juan County. OPALCO provides electricity that is 97% greenhouse-gas free and is generated predominantly by hydroelectric plants. OPALCO was founded in 1937.