Gearing Up for Green Power with Puget Sound Energy

Want to reduce your carbon footprint? You aren’t alone. Puget Sound Energy (PSE) plans to cut its carbon emissions 50 percent by 2040, while helping customers do the same. PSE has many ways to creating renewable energy – and Whatcom County has played an integral part in the expansion of these options.

Heather Mulligan, PSE’s market manager for its green power and net metering programs, says that nine percent of PSE’s power currently comes from renewable energy sources. By 2020, that figure must reach 15 percent.

For its voluntary Green Power Program, Mulligan says the company’s first priority is to source renewable energy from projects developed in the PSE area before looking further afield. The company currently owns three windfarms in the Pacific Northwest, including the Wild Horse Wind Farm that dominates the landscape off of Interstate 90 east of Ellensburg. Additional projects include solar, geothermal, low-impact hydroelectricity and biogas from dairies and landfills.

Whether you’re a residential or commercial customer of PSE, there are several renewable energy programs you can voluntarily enroll in to match all or a portion of your energy usage:

Green Power and Solar Choice

PSE’s Green Power program began in 2002 and currently covers 46,000 participants. It allows customers to match some or all of their electricity usage with green power from the regional renewable projects. Customers can enroll for as little as $4 more a month, or roughly 1 cent per Kilowatt-hour. The program helps customers drop their carbon footprint and requires no additional equipment or action other than simply signing up.

PSE’s Solar Choice program, which began last year and has more than 2,500 participants, lets customers buy blocks of solar energy sources from various Washington- and Idaho-based solar projects. Like Green Power, customers can match all or a portion of their energy usage and purchase 150 Kilowatt-hour ‘blocks’ of solar energy at $5 per block.

Customers can sign up for both programs at the same time, if they wish. These programs are just one reason PSE stands out as a utility provider. “We’re very proud of the fact that it’s among the top five utility green pricing programs in the nation, in terms of both participation and mega-watt hours sold,” says Mulligan.

Getting started

For homeowners looking into solar energy, Mulligan says PSE net meters their system, crediting customers for any power they put back into the grid at the same rate they purchase power from PSE. Those credits can accumulate on their bill over the course of the year, so when customers produce more power than they need during sunny summer months, they can use those credits in the dark and rainy winter months, when energy usage likely increases and solar production is down.

In addition to credits, customers may be eligible for the Washington State Production Incentive Program, which provides qualifying participants with an annual payment for energy produced by their equipment, regardless of their energy usage. Currently, customers earn 16 cents per Kilowatt-hour, plus an additional 5cents per Kilowatt-hour if their panels are manufactured in-state.

Here again, Bellingham comes up big, as it’s home to Itek Energy, the only in-state manufacturer of solar panels. Mulligan says PSE can also point customers to qualified local contractors for solar panel installation.

Turning Poo into Power

For Whatcom County farmers, PSE’s dairy digester projects provide many benefits. The county currently contains four of six digesters selling renewable power to PSE.

Mulligan says cow manure usually sits in open-air holding ponds, allowing methane gas – perhaps the most potent greenhouse gas – to escape into the atmosphere. The program allows farmers to install large, bifurcated concrete tanks on their property to store the manure. Over about 21 days, the manure works its way through the tank, allowing methane to rise to the tank top and be captured, where the gas is used to run a power-producing generator. Leftover methane is destroyed and released into the air as carbon dioxide.

The process gives farmers a liquid, nitrogen-rich fertilizer to spread on their fields, as well as a solid fertilizer material for gardening. It’s even good bedding for cows, as it’s 99.99 percent pathogen-free.

Farmers who are interested in selling this energy to PSE can sign 15-year power purchase agreements. This allows them to know exactly how much they’ll be paid by PSE over the term, giving them the chance to show potential project lenders guaranteed income. A separate agreement can also allow farmers to monetize their renewable energy credits.

Green Direct

Another current program is “Green Direct,” which is geared towards large corporate customers using more than 10,000 Megawatt-hours a year, as well as state and local government entities. Those customers include state universities, ports, and municipal and state governments.

In the first phase of the program, 21 customers subscribed to receive power from a currently under-development windfarm in Lewis County, south of Olympia. PSE doesn’t own the farm, but signed a 20-year power purchase agreement to use its energy. Local subscribers to the project include Western Washington University, the City of Bellingham, and Whatcom County.

Once the farm begins to produce wind power, these subscribers will start paying for the renewable energy. “One thing that we heard from those customers was … they wanted to know that they were impacting the build of new, renewable resources,” Mulligan says. “All those customers really can say that project is being built because of their actions.”

The completion of the windfarm is slated for next year.

Program dedication

More immediately, PSE recently awarded the City of Bellingham a $50,000 solar array that will be officially installed and dedicated on Taylor Dock in a June 27 ceremony.  PSE’s Nicholas Hartrich says they’ve worked closely with the city’s parks and recreation department to find a site for the array, seeking a location both highly visible and capable of adequate power generation.

Partners in the project include ITek Energy, Sustainable Connections, the Community Boating Center, The Hub Community Bike Shop, Recreation Northwest and the city’s parks and recreation department. Hartrich says the goal is to transport half the array’s 28 solar panels from Itek’s nearby location using only bicycles and human-powered watercraft like rowboats, kayaks and stand-up paddleboards.

“The panels,” Hartrich says, “are for the people.”

The solar array is a result of the 2016 collaboration between the City of Bellingham and PSE to sign up several hundred residents for the Green Power Program during that year.

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