Four decades ago the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) embarked on a quixotic mission to build five nuclear plants to supply needed energy.
Founded by a group of utilities in the 1950s, WPPSS was created as a way to guarantee electric power to homes and industry in the Northwest. The 50s were a time when the region could boast of an abundance of inexpensive energy, an era that called on customers to “live better electrically.”
Throughout the 50s and 60s, aluminum companies flocked to the state, drawn by the relatively cheap and plentiful energy. Ten aluminum smelters, most sited along the Columbia River, employed 11,000 workers but consumed huge amounts of electricity – 3,150 megawatts annually, enough to light three cities the size of Seattle.
Then just as the region was growing, WPPSS began to face predictions of looming power shortages. The Bonneville Power Administration, which sells power from federal dams to local utilities, sounded an alarm in 1974. When delivering the troubling prediction, BPA administrator Don Hodel had little sympathy for environmentalists who wanted to conserve. He called them “Prophets of Shortages.”
The WPPSS board, composed mostly of farmers and small businessmen based in Richland, prepared to deal with the increasing shortfall. They believed predicted shortages could best be met by investment in nuclear power.
They decided the first plant, No. 2, would be located at Hanford, the decommissioned nuclear site. Two more plants, numbers 1 and 3, were to be sited at Satsop in Grays Harbor County. Finally, plants 4 and 5 were added to the scheme. Cost estimates for the five plants, originally set at 4.1 billion, eventually ballooned to 23.8 billion.
By 1983, the supply system, plagued by inflation and mismanagement, was facing failure. Rather than building its way out of shortfalls, WPPSS had stumbled into the largest municipal bond default in U.S. history. Lawsuits over an unpaid 2.25 billion dollars in WPPSS bonds would clog the courts for years and cost ratepayers heavily. It’s no surprise the system came to be known derisively as “Whoops.”
The WPPSS disaster of boom and bust should offer important lessons for today. Once again, our energy resources are challenged, threatened this time not by aluminum smelters but by massive new data centers that power artificial intelligence. These centers use vast quantities of electric power, ranging from a maximum capacity of 54- to 120 megawatts, enough to power 200,000 to 300,000 homes.
The centers typically occupy up to 500,000 square feet of space – equal to two football fields – to support tens of thousands of servers. In addition to massive amounts of electric power, the servers also require substantial amounts of water for cooling.
Seattle City Light reports that three companies (Prologis, Equinix and Sabey) have been eying four sites in this area for massive new data centers. Seattle already has a couple of dozen data centers but these are relatively small.
Seattle hasn’t yet authorized or permitted any of the giant data centers. But the prospect is already raising public alarm. Seattle Councilmember Eddie Lin reports his office email account recently was flooded with 54,000 emails supporting a moratorium on massive data centers.
Fears over possible consequences prompted Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson to release a statement about the data centers, saying, “I share city concerns about environmental justice, economic resilience and increased costs for Seattle ratepayers. That’s why my team is working closely with Seattle City Light, the City Council and stakeholders to identify long-term policy approaches, including a moratorium on siting new centers.”
The idea of a moratorium is worthy of consideration as this area is already facing other challenges to its electrical grid. A study by Energy and Environmental Economics funded by many of the state’s largest utilities has found that electricity growth combined with retirement of fossil fuel electric sources will create a resource gap of 9 gigawatts of effective capacity by 2030 and between 14 and 18 gigawatts by 2035. That’s how much demand could exceed supply on the hottest and coldest Northwest days.
When the Northwest electric supply falls short of demand, utilities must import costly power from other sources beyond the state and region. But the transmission lines that convey electricity to this region are already beginning to strain capacity and must be upgraded.
Emerging sources of energy – including geothermal, advanced nuclear and perhaps even visions of fusion may eventually produce clean, firm electricity to the grid. But presently these sources are unavailable and, in any case, not up to scale.
To reduce the risk of blackouts in the interim, it is prudent to delay permitting massive data bases. A moratorium may be the best answer. That’s the path taken this year by legislators in Maine although Janet Mills, that state’s governor, just vetoed the bill.
In the Pacific Northwest, a region still haunted by memories of the WPPSS failure, there is ample reason to move with caution. For the far-sighted, hope lies in more reliance on conservation and on approaches such as increased roof-top solar energy and “time of use” pricing. One potential source of power is Helion, an Everett-based start-up that makes use of fusion. Helion has broken ground in Chelan County; but there still is much uncertainty. Will the world’s first fusion plant produce more power than it consumes? Meanwhile this region should proceed along three fronts: delay, innovation and relying on available strategies.
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