Puget Sound Energy expanding solar power
Customer homes, Wild Horse Solar Facility contribute to growing solar production

BELLEVUE, Wash. - October 31, 2007 - Puget Sound Energy is deepening its mark in renewable energy, with the utility and its customers now boasting more than 1,200 kilowatts (kW) of combined solar-power generating capacity or enough to serve the total power needs of 125 homes.

Already the Northwest's largest utility producer of renewable energy by virtue of its two large wind farms in Washington state, PSE this month finished building the main installation of the Northwest's largest solar-power generating facility at the company's Wild Horse Wind Facility near Ellensburg, Wash. Meanwhile, more and more PSE customers, with the utility's help, are developing their own, on-site renewable-power generating systems.

PSE customers generating own renewable power

More than 200 PSE customers in nine Western Washington counties today are generating electricity from their own roofs and backyards, primarily with 700 kW of solar system capacity. As participants in PSE's net-metering program, these customers offset their utility bills and get future credit by feeding any excess electricity they produce back to PSE's power grid.

Within the past year, the number of PSE net-metered customers nearly doubled, making PSE's metered program among the largest and fastest growing in the state.

"Our customers' interest and investments in the environment demonstrate the region's commitment to renewable resources," said Kimberly Harris, executive vice president and chief resource officer for PSE. "PSE is proud to reach this important milestone and to serve customers who are working to go green and conserve our valuable resources."

Net metering refers to customers who generate their own electricity with solar, wind, hydro or dairy anaerobic-digester systems, fuel cells, or a combination of these resources, and are connected to PSE's distribution grid under a Washington state law created in 1998. These systems offset electricity that would otherwise be purchased from the utility, while ensuring that even on cloudy or windless days, the customers have a dependable source of energy. An electric meter tracks the "net" difference between customer-generated energy and power drawn from the grid.

In months when a customer's system generates more electricity than the home or business needs, a credit is issued to the customer's account. That power credit can be used during months when the customer's on-site electricity production is low and they must rely on PSE.

Net-metering customers also can participate in PSE's Renewable Energy Advantage Program (REAP). The program, which supports a 2006 Washington state initiative promoting small-scale renewable energy, pays customers for generating their own electricity from solar, wind or dairy anaerobic-digester systems.

Customers can receive 12 to 54 cents for each kilowatt-hour (kWh) their systems generate, up to $2,000 annually. The incentive payment for each kWh generated varies depending on how much of their renewable energy system uses components manufactured in Washington.

PSE producing test power at Northwest's largest solar facility

Beyond customer-produced solar energy, PSE's new Wild Horse Solar Facility, the Pacific Northwest's largest, this month began producing electricity amid the spinning rotors of the company's Wild Horse Wind Facility.

PSE, which owns and operates the 229-megawatt (MW) wind farm in central Washington where the sunshine is equivalent to that in Houston, completed construction this month on the main portion of the new Wild Horse solar installation. Depending on the sunshine, the 2,408 newly installed solar panels can now generate up to 450 kilowatts of "test" power.

"This demonstration facility will give our company – and the energy industry as a whole – the ability to learn more about the viability of large-scale solar generation here in the Pacific Northwest," said Harris. "What's more, it will allow us to examine the potential for integrating solar power and wind power at a shared site.

"Our hope, above all, is that we'll look back 20 years from now and say that Wild Horse helped to propel the development of a strong commercial market for solar-powered electricity."

PSE's 9,000-acre Wild Horse facility, about 125 miles southeast of Seattle, is thought to be one of the only places in the United States where utility-scale wind- and solar-powered electricity generation occur side-by-side. More than 300 additional Washington-made solar panels will be mounted next spring outside PSE's Wild Horse Renewable Energy Center, about one mile from the much larger, newly completed first array of panels.

No Washington company manufactured solar panels before Wild Horse. In planning the facility, PSE purposely looked for a Washington-based company willing and able to build a line of locally made panels. PSE found that company in Silicon Energy LLC.

An Arlington, Wash.-based subsidiary of Outback Power Systems, Silicon Energy will supply the panels scheduled to be installed next spring. Harris noted with a new manufacturing line of in-state solar panels, Silicon Energy will give PSE customers and other Washington residents a way to boost their state renewable-energy incentive payments. The two arrays' combined power generation will be about three times the output of the next-largest solar-power facility in the Northwest, in Klamath Falls, Ore. PSE's Wild Horse solar facility will produce enough energy, on average, to serve about 55 homes' total power needs.

San Rafael, Calif.-based EI Solutions, the systems-integration arm of parent company Energy Innovations, designed PSE's $4 million Wild Horse solar facility, and also managed the five-month construction of the first set of arrays. "We're fortunate to have EI Solutions as our partner in this project," Harris said. "Their expertise in solar energy has been instrumental to the success of this effort."

Information on PSE's renewable energy generation and Net Metering Program as well as how to receive the state's incentive through REAP, is available at PSE.com or by calling a PSE Energy Advisor at 1-800-562-1482.

Besides its Wild Horse Wind Facility, PSE owns and operates a 150-MW wind farm, Hopkins Ridge, near Dayton, Wash. Together, the wind farms' 379-MW generating capacity produces enough energy to serve 100,000 homes.

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About Puget Sound Energy

Washington state's oldest and largest energy utility, with a 6,000-square-mile service territory stretching across 11 counties, Puget Sound Energy serves more than 1 million electric customers and 721,000 natural gas customers primarily in the growing Puget Sound region of Western Washington. PSE, a subsidiary of Puget Energy (NYSE: PSD), meets the energy needs of its growing customer base through incremental, cost-effective energy conservation, low-cost procurement of sustainable energy resources, and far-sighted investment in the energy-delivery infrastructure.

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