Snohomish County PUD Powering Our Community into the Future
It’s an incredible time to be your publicly owned utility. Over the past two years, we’ve come together to support each other through the COVID- 19 pandemic. Day and night, our crews have been out in rain, snow, ice and wind to keep power and water coming to our more than 360,000 customers in Snohomish County and Camano Island. We couldn’t do what we do without your support.
Like you, we look forward to the pandemic subsiding and getting more opportunities to interact in-person in the coming year. Engaging with you, our customers and owners, is incredibly important to us.
Whether you attend our twice monthly Commission meetings, or visit our booth at the Evergreen State Fair, we look forward to every opportunity we have to talk with you and listen to your vision for your public power utility.
As we look ahead to tomorrow, we do it with your needs and dreams, and the needs and dreams of future generations, in mind. Over the past five years, the PUD’s fuel mix has included on average more than 98% clean resources. The Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) and the federally owned Columbia River Power System were created with the belief that significant investments in infrastructure could serve Pacific Northwest families for generations. We are a beneficiary of that vision today as BPA’s largest customer. BPA supplies approximately 80 to 85% of our power. And the bulk of that power is clean hydroelectric power.
We know that to reach our goal of providing 100% clean power to our customers, we must be innovative. The PUD has invested in a variety of renewable energy projects ranging from our Jackson Hydro Project in the Sultan River Basin to our partnership with Qualco Energy’s biogas project just south of Monroe. Last year our cutting-edge Arlington Microgrid came online, and it is now capable of providing power to the PUD’s Arlington Clean Energy Center during an outage that could be caused by a windstorm or major earthquake. When the microgrid isn’t acting like a giant solar-powered emergency generator, it helps to pay for itself by providing renewable energy integration and grid support.
As part of the microgrid, the PUD created its Community Solar program at the site. Community Solar programs make it easier for all customers to benefit from solar energy by leasing or purchasing shares of solar output at a community site without needing a sunny roof or funding for their own solar panels.
We look forward to announcing future Community Solar programs this year.
One of the other major steps to help us get to a more sustainable future is our Connect Up project. With the deployment of new metering technology and infrastructure, Connect Up promises to be a cornerstone for enabling extraordinary capabilities for both our customers to better manage their energy use and potentially lower their bills, and for us, the PUD, to offer custom rate schedules, additional demand-response options, improved integration of the distributed energy resources (such as roof top solar and EVs), and enhanced reliability. Watch for more information on this project in coming months.
The PUD will continue to make renewable technology more accessible to all customers. Incentives are available for eligible electric vehicle chargers and energy-efficiency home improvements. Resources are also available for business projects. Together, we can continue to invest in, and achieve, a sustainable future. For more information on our program offerings visit www.snopud.com
Photos Courtesy of PUD
