State Commission Questions Energize Eastside

Commissioners are listening!

On Monday, the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission validated five important questions that CENSE has raised about PSE’s Energize Eastside project during the past 4 years:

  • What effect do large flows of electricity to Canada and California have on the Eastside electric grid?
  • Why did PSE assume half a dozen local generation plants were offline in studies that justify the project?
  • Why hasn’t PSE readjusted its forecasts given continued low growth in usage of electricity? (The Commission noted that PSE has often overestimated demand growth.)
  • Did PSE fully explore the possibility of sharing infrastructure owned by other nearby utilities? (Seattle City Light already owns a lightly-used transmission line through the Eastside.)
  • Why did PSE refuse to share modeling data with experts who had obtained the necessary security clearance from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission?

You can read the Commission’s whole response on page 10 here: UE-160918_UG-160919 Acknowledgment Letter (PDF)

We have two more questions. Would the UTC allow PSE to raise electric rates by hundreds of millions of dollars to pay for a project burdened by these uncertainties? Will city councils approve permits to build it, when there are smarter, more cost-effective ways to serve the Eastside’s energy future?

CENSE looks forward to public hearings that are expected later this year. CENSE asks cities to demand better answers from PSE before they permit the company to degrade our environment by cutting thousands of trees and threaten our safety by digging big holes near petroleum pipelines.

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