The Puget Sound air-conditioner

Wham! The Puget Sound air-conditioner kicked into high gear with gusto last night, bursting our hot weather bubble with a rush of cold, marine air straight in off the Pacific Ocean.

For some, the gusts hit 40 mph or more, and for about 10,000 PSE customers that meant the power went 0ut. Your ceiling fan had no juice, but at least Mother Nature helped cool down the house.

The satellite picture here is from this morning, and it really shows the distinct west and east climates of Washington, with the gray skies for the Puget Sound basin (shown by the smooth gray clouds) being contrasted with the clear skies for areas of higher elevation and east of the Cascades. To the south, you can see "bumpy" clouds that are the last remnants of thunderstorms in Oregon, which kicked off our winds last night.

When fall storms come our way, many times the media will call PSE and ask if we are rushing out for a little last-minute tree-trimming. This always makes me smile, because we are in "storm mode" throughout the year. Tree-trimming, for example, is a $12 million - 12 month commitment here at the utility, and crews are always ready to respond to whatever nature -- or mankind -- throws at us.

It might be a sudden, gusty hot night in June, or perhaps a "car-pole" accident -- but outages can occur anytime.

Last night proves two things: we get a little more hot weather in our area than you might think, and being ready for a storm is never a bad thing, even on a sunny, calm day.

Mercury rises, so does energy use

Probably not a big surprise, but when the thermometer goes up, so does energy use.

Our record early June heat (as seen in the colorful computer model image from the UW on the right), sent the mercury up and also electric demand, too.

PSE's peak energy use the last few days has been about 2,900 megawatts (MW) -- not too far off our all-time peak of nearly 3,200 MW from July 11, 2007. That day was even hotter -- a record 98 degrees at SeaTac.

Our all-time record high for SeaTac is 100 degrees from July 20, 1994.

One other note about these peaks in electric demand, they've all occured around 5 p.m., when people are getting home and when the maximum temperature is typically reached on a hot day.

The sun may be at its zenith closer to noon, but hottest temperatures in our latitude are later in the day, usually between 4 to 6 p.m. depending on variables such as winds, late day clouds and other quirks.

In a typical summer, the Puget Sound area will see 90 degree temperatures once or twice -- with some summers failing to see 90 degrees at all.

The hottest spot in our area? Usually it's from Olympia and south, due to a bit less wind off of Puget Sound than some other areas.

Thinking of air-conditioning? Consider an efficient heat pump.

Follow the money

An interesting report today from the UN that says in 2008 worldwide investments in renewable energy sources such wind and solar power exceeded investments in traditional fossil fuel sources, mainly petroleum.

The investment in renewable energy hit $140 billion worldwide, compared to $110 billion in fossil fuels. Clearly, fossil fuel investments have a long head start when it comes to total investment dollars, but it's interesting to see that renewable sources are currently seeing greater dollars coming in.

A few reasons for this: worldwide concern over climate change and the increasing cost of finding new fossil fuel reserves.

Often, new and alternative energy supplies are compared in price to existing fossil fuel resources, and frequently the alternatives lose out. But that's a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison, with a better benchmark for renewables being the cost of finding and extracting new resources -- which is getting more expensive whether you are talking about renewable energy or fossil fuels. In the Pacific Northwest, we are growing in population, and using more energy per person as well.

For Puget Sound Energy, the investments in renewables continue, with an expansion at our Wild Horse Wind and Solar Facility (seen in the photo above) this summer and the continued development of the Lower Snake River Wind Energy Project, which will be one of the largest wind farms in the nation.

Planning Ahead

When you're in the energy business, planning ahead is key. This week PSE filed our vision of the future in the form of our draft Integrated Resource Plan, which is a document we file with the state's Utilities and Transportation Commission.

Although the plan won't be approved by the UTC until later this summer, the draft outlines the big picture of where we see the energy industry in the next two decades.

The short story is more wind power (the picture shows our Hopkins Ridge Wind Facility in eastern Washington), more natural gas-fired electric generation and more direct use of natural gas (for heating and water-heating), and a lot more use of energy efficiency as a resource for meeting new growth. Combined, these strategies will address the environmental challenges we face, as well as meet economic demands for providing energy at a reasonable cost.

And grow we will, with an expectation that the number of people in our service area in Western Washington will expand by about one million people by 2029.

For the full drilldown, you can read an executive summary of the plan and really see some of the nuts and bolts of how PSE envisions our energy future.