SEATTLE — The way we get electricity into our homes and workplaces and the other places we go is changing. The power grid used to be a one-way street — electricity was made at a plant, and then sent to the buildings that needed it to power lights, appliances, heating and cooling — but these days, things are a lot more complicated.
Demand for electricity is also growing as climate change progresses and we move away from fossil fuels. So where is all that power going to come from? That was the focus of a summit in Seattle last week.
The Pacific Northwest Energy Summit was hosted by Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell and Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden. They, along with utility companies and representatives from local tribes and officials from the U.S. Department of Energy, talked about the changes we need to be making in order to meet the growing need for electricity.
'Remarkable' surge in demand
Pacific Northwest Utilities Conference Committee (PNUCC), among other things, track electricity usage in the Northwest and make forecasts on future needs.
“What we have seen in the last two years is remarkable," said PNUCC's Crystal Ball. "We are seeing a surge in demand for electricity that exceeds PNUCC's previous forecast. And this year's — the 2024 update to the Northwest Regional Forecast Project's demand could increase by 30% in the next 10 years. That's an increase of 7,000 average megawatts of enough electricity to power seven cities the size of the city we're in today: Seattle.”
In other words, there is big demand, and it’s growing fast, as Ball forecasts.
Ball said there are three main reasons why they're expecting the increase: First, the trend toward electrification in homes and cars as we try to reduce fossil fuel usage. Second, the growing development of data centers throughout the Northwest; those are physical buildings that hold tech infrastructure for companies; they also power artificial intelligence. Lastly, more high-tech manufacturing — things like semiconductor manufacturing, which lawmakers are trying to move back to the U.S.
That’s too much, man!
Right now, those leaders say our grid can barely handle the demands currently placed on it.
Take extreme weather, for example — the time when you want to have a reliable source of power. That's when our grid is at its most vulnerable, and in recent years, on a national standpoint, we've seen it fail from time to time, sometimes because of physical damage from storms.
Climate Central, a nonprofit made up of scientists who work on spreading the word about climate change, said that 80% of power outages in the last 20 years were due to weather and the majority of those power outages happened in the past decade.
But there have also been rolling blackouts, or when power companies choose to turn off the electricity to a certain area temporarily. In 11 different states across the country, utility companies have had to institute rolling blackouts because they don't have enough electricity for everyone all at once. We saw that just two years ago, when a winter storm in the Southeast put a huge demand on the power grid there, and rolling blackouts were instituted in Tennessee, Kentucky, and North and South Carolina.
We haven't had rolling blackouts here in the Northwest yet, but Kurt Miller from the Northwest Public Power Association said it's been close.
“The future is now. The future is already here," Miller said. "We are already on the edge of an energy crisis across much of the United States, including the Northwest. And in the Northwest, we have not had to do that; we have not had to institute rolling blackouts, but we have come very close. This last Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, utilities in Oregon and Washington both declared stage 3 energy emergency alerts. The next step is blacking out their customers.”
So, what do we do about it all?
Those leaders are floating a couple of large-scale solutions — most of them are years off.
Remember when I told you about how our electric grid was built as a one-way system? One of things they'd like to see is a multi-directional grid. That's where power is sent to buildings, and those buildings can send surplus energy back.
“Getting more out of our buildings, managing our buildings, will be the key to providing the demand the peak and the reliability that we need. And that will require a multidirectional grid at the distribution level," explained Nancy Hirsh with the Northwest Energy Coalition.
"We have a one-way power grid," she continued. "Mostly, it comes from generation goes to the buildings, to the load. The future and in the near term, even, is a multidirectional grid that supports the use of buildings as a resource to provide that peak energy and the utility will interact with that building when they need it.”
Eventually, the idea is to have a smart grid in place, so that power companies can dial in exactly how energy is being used and tweak it as conditions change. Some of this is done with artificial intelligence.
U.S. Department of Energy explained this in a video: “The smart grid introduces a two-way dialogue, where electricity and information can be exchanged between the utility and its customers. It's a developing network of communications, controls, computers, automation and new technologies and tools working together to make the grid more efficient, more reliable, more secure and greener. This smart grid enables new technologies to be integrated, such as wind and solar energy production, and plug in electric vehicle charging.”
The panelists at the summit were excited about that one, saying that the smart grid is already showing promise in Portland.
"Last week during the prolonged heat wave, Portland General Electric (PGE) experienced its largest electricity demand shift in company history, and PGE customers were able to contribute 100 megawatts on Monday and Tuesday in shifting demand," Ball said. "That's remarkable."
More in store
There are some other solutions the panelists were excited about, including green hydrogen, which is hydrogen that can be used for power. It's created by splitting water molecules by electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen molecules. The hydrogen is used for power, and the oxygen goes into the air. It's created using renewable energy sources like wind and solar, but it needs to be stored and transported — and that infrastructure is a long ways off.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Energy announced $1 billion in funding for the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Association's PNW2 Hub to become a regional clean hydrogen hub. They're expecting to get another $5 billion in local investment. The hub is expected to create 10,000 jobs focused on clean hydrogen production and transportation.
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Then, there's nuclear fusion, which is energy created when atomic nuclei combine. It's the opposite of how nuclear power works now through fission, where atoms are split to create energy. Right now, research into fusion is underway, including at the University of Washington, but the technology is not quite there to create it.
But three fusion energy companies are located in Washington state, and they're backed by hundreds of millions in venture capital.
Lawmakers in the Northwest are also looking at advanced nuclear energy, which are next-generation nuclear reactors that can operate 24/7. Next-generation nuclear reactors are expected to start operating by 2030 with several companies operating in Washington.
And, new energy storage technology is advancing, including long-term storage, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is working on that.
But, Northwest Public Power Association’s Miller warned that the Northwest is "woefully behind" when it comes to the buildout of all this infrastructure and that there are big barriers in the way.
“We're only building at about half the rate we need to actually build to achieve the West clean energy goals. So, what's causing that?
"One, certainly supply chain issues. But the other big, big pushback … is communities. Communities — the more that there are large scale industrial solar and wind plants that are being built, the more that they start to push back against those … because most of these fall on rural communities, and also, they can change the rural nature of those communities.
"And so there is that push and pull of it: Right where we're trying to do something for the greater good, but at the same time, you have to respect those communities as well. So that's a challenge,” Miller concluded.
Several of the leaders at the summit proposed coming up with a regional planning team to work on all of it together. But all that green remains to be seen.