Snohomish County PUD

Vehicle-to-Grid EV chargers are installed — The Clean Energy Center is up, the Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) EV chargers are installed, the Community Solar array is in the background, and the PUD Arlington Microgrid will be ready to operate in June.

Your utility of the future

CONTRIBUTED BY THE SNOHOMISH COUNTY PUBLIC UTILITY DISTRICT

It’s an incredible time to be your publicly owned utility. Over the past year, 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.

So, 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 percent 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 percent of our power. And the bulk of that power is clean hydroelectric power.

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The Arlington Microgrid site includes a Community Solar array with 1,620 panels that provides enough energy to power about 60 homes.

We know that to reach our goal of providing 100 percent 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. One project that will be coming online this year is our Arlington Microgrid. The Arlington Microgrid is designed and sized to provide power to the PUD’s Arlington Community Office 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 will help 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.

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 better rate schedules, demand response options, improve integration of the distributed energy resources (such as roof-top solar and EVs), and improve 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 commercial and industrial projects. Together, we can continue to invest in, and achieve, a sustainable future.