[By Travis Grizzel, Snoqualmie, WA. Views expressed are those of the author, not the Living Snoqualmie website. You may submit letters to [email protected].]
My name is Travis Grizzel. I moved from Colorado to Washington in February 2011, when my wife was pregnant and we were trying to find a place where we could build a life. One reason Washington made sense was the cost of living, especially utilities. The possibility of living on a single income helped bring us here. The beauty of the Pacific Northwest is why we stayed.
In 2014, with a second child now in the picture, we moved to Snoqualmie Ridge. The Snoqualmie Valley has been a magical place to raise our children. But over the past few years, energy costs have changed. My own PSE bill has climbed steadily, recently cresting above $800 in a single month. I hear the same frustration from neighbors. Something has to be done about energy costs in this region.
That is part of why I support clean energy. It is also why I support battery storage. A few years ago, I spent weeks working with a solar installer to scope out a residential microgrid for our home: solar, battery storage, smart panels, EV charging, and backup capability. I wanted that project to work. In the end, it did not. The trees around our home and the roofline made the solar production too limited. The technology was good. The goal was good. The site was wrong.
That is exactly how I now see the proposed Cascadia Ridge battery project near Snoqualmie Ridge.
Jupiter Power initially proposed a 45-acre, 130-megawatt utility-scale battery energy storage facility in unincorporated King County, across Snoqualmie Parkway from Snoqualmie Ridge, south of Fisher Creek Park, connecting into PSE’s nearby Mt. Si substation. We are now hearing the project may be revised or resubmitted as a 450-megawatt facility. If true, that is not a minor adjustment. It is more than three times larger than the project many residents first understood.
At first glance, I should be easy to convince. I support clean energy. I support batteries. I have personally tried to put storage on my own house. But the more I learn, the clearer the problem becomes. This is not an anti-BESS position. It is a siting position. A facility that may now be as large as 450 megawatts does not belong beside Snoqualmie neighborhoods, parks, schools, wetlands, and constrained Valley roads simply because the substation is nearby and the interconnection is convenient.
That convenience is doing a lot of the work here. The site is near existing electrical infrastructure. It is outside Snoqualmie city limits, which means the City of Snoqualmie does not control the permit. It appears attractive on a planning map because power can be moved in and out efficiently. From a developer’s perspective, those are advantages. From the perspective of families living nearby, they are warnings.
The people living near Snoqualmie Parkway, Fisher Creek Park, Snoqualmie Ridge, North Bend, Fall City, and the surrounding Valley are not being offered a neighborhood resilience project. This is not a microgrid designed to keep Cascade View Elementary open during an outage. It is not a backup system for nearby homes. It is not a local power guarantee for the families closest to the facility. It is a large commercial energy asset whose value comes from the broader power system.
Batteries do not generate new electricity. They store electricity when it is cheaper or more available, then discharge it when electricity is more valuable. A grid-scale battery can make money by controlling timing, by being available, by providing reserves, and by offering fast-response grid services. That may be useful to the grid, but it does not mean nearby residents get lower bills.
The original 130-megawatt version was already financially meaningful. At hypothetical capacity values from $50 to $200 per kilowatt-year, a 130-megawatt project could represent roughly $6.5 million to $26 million in gross annual revenue. A 450-megawatt facility would represent 450,000 kilowatts of capacity. At the same range, that is roughly $22.5 million to $90 million in gross annual revenue, or $450 million to $1.8 billion over 20 years before costs. This is not a claim about Jupiter’s exact profit; the public cannot see the full economics. But the order of magnitude matters.
PSE may benefit by adding a resource to its system. Jupiter Power and BlackRock may benefit financially. The regional grid may benefit in some broad, diluted sense. But no one has shown that this project will meaningfully lower Snoqualmie residents’ bills. There is no local rate discount, no neighborhood resilience guarantee, and no promise that nearby homes, schools, or businesses will stay powered during an outage.
The financial benefit is specific and bankable for Jupiter and its investors. The local benefit is indirect, theoretical, and thinly spread. The risk, by contrast, is concentrated.
Local residents and opposition groups have already begun mapping schools, neighborhoods, parks, medical facilities, businesses, and community assets within one-, three-, and five-mile impact zones. Those maps should be independently verified by King County using final facility coordinates, final battery-container locations, prevailing wind modeling, topography, seasonal inversions, access routes, evacuation timing, and credible worst-case fire and gas-release assumptions.
The failure mode matters. Lithium-ion battery failures can involve thermal runaway, vented gases, fire, toxic and corrosive compounds, contaminated runoff, road closures, air monitoring, shelter-in-place orders, and evacuations. Normal operation is not what residents fear. A serious incident is.
Washington has seen the broader pattern before. Grand Coulee Dam produces enormous amounts of electricity for the regional power system; the power is not reserved only for the community below the dam. Energy infrastructure often places the physical burden in one community while spreading the benefits thinly across many others. Cascadia Ridge is not Grand Coulee in scale, but it follows a similar logic in miniature: local burden, regionalized benefit, and financial upside captured elsewhere.
Mayor James Mayhew, the Snoqualmie City Council, King County Councilmember Sarah Perry, King County, PSE, and state legislators should not treat this as routine. If the project has materially changed from 130 megawatts to 450 megawatts, there should be a full reset of public notice, public meetings, environmental review, emergency-response review, and political scrutiny.
The ask is straightforward: require a full Environmental Impact Statement, demand independent hazard modeling, publish the real emergency-planning footprint, strengthen King County’s BESS ordinance, and stop this project from moving forward at this location.
I support clean energy. I support battery storage. My own home taught me the central lesson: good technology in the wrong location is still the wrong project.
Comments
Excellent explanation of why this BESS site should not be located where it is currently proposed near Snoqualmie Ridge. Thank you for so clearly identifying the many problems/concerns.
I agree with these sentiments.
Good idea, but wrong site, and not a “business” that will help Snoqualmie grow. And because the city most affected – Snoqualmie – has no voice in this, the failure of this on-site system could be catastrophic.
This storage backup belongs on a site that is isolated and far from where people work, shop, or live.
Has any thought been given to installing city block scale microgrids to aggregate onsite generation, storage and EV’s, to benefit that city block community
Ah, the bourgeois NIMBYist’s refrain. “Oh, of course I support green energy, but this infrastructure isn’t appropriate for _our_ community.” Push it out to where we don’t have to see it. Limit its risks and impacts to the poor, the rubes, the uncool people who don’t drive white Tesla Model Ys.
If you think intermittent renewable power such as solar and wind are the future, then accept that we will need storage systems and that your community should be part of the solution.
And no, your failed solar project isn’t an argument against Cascadia Ridge. You system was a bad idea because “trees around our home and the roofline made the solar production too limited.” Your fault. Cascadia Ridge is a “bad idea” because you don’t want to shoulder the risks and impacts of the energy transition.
1. The “Bill Reduction” Fallacy
The author argues that because the battery won’t lower his specific bill, it has no local benefit.
The Hole: No single power project (substation, transmission line, or battery) lowers a specific neighbor’s bill. Utility rates are socialized across the entire PSE customer base.
The Counter: By this logic, we could never build any infrastructure anywhere. If everyone demanded a personal discount to live near a transformer or a water main, the grid would collapse. The “local benefit” is grid stability for the Mt. Si substation, which the author admitted is right there.
2. The Revenue vs. Profit “Boogeyman”
The author throws out scary numbers ($90M/year, $1.8B over 20 years).
The Hole: These are gross revenue estimates based on “hypothetical capacity values.” He provides no data on the massive CapEx (hundreds of millions for 450MW of lithium-ion), O&M, or the cost of the electricity used to charge the batteries (which isn’t free).
The Counter: High revenue doesn’t mean “greed.” It reflects the massive scale of investment required to move the state away from gas peaker plants. He’s using big numbers to trigger an emotional “corporate greed” response while ignoring the actual thin margins of energy arbitrage.
3. The “Not a Microgrid” Complaint
He complains it won’t keep the local elementary school open during a storm.
The Hole: Utility-scale BESS (Battery Energy Storage Systems) are designed for Regional Reliability, not “prepping.”
The Counter: A 450MW battery helps prevent regional rolling blackouts during “Dunkelflaute” events (cold, still nights in WA when wind and solar drop). Preventing a regional grid collapse does help the school—it keeps the entire Valley from going dark.
4. Comparison to Grand Coulee
The author compares a local battery to a massive hydro dam that flooded indigenous lands.
The Hole: This is a massive “False Equivalence.” A battery sits on a 45-acre gravel pad and makes almost no noise or emissions. A dam permanently alters an entire ecosystem and river system.
The Counter: It’s a hyperbole intended to make a suburban zoning issue feel like a historical tragedy.
5. The “Thermal Runaway” Scare Tactics
He lists “vented gases, toxic compounds, and evacuations.”
The Hole: Modern BESS use LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate) chemistry, which is significantly more stable and less prone to thermal runaway than the NMC (Nickel Manganese Cobalt) batteries found in older EVs or laptops.
The Counter: He’s treating a 2026 industrial project like a 2015 experimental one. Modern fire suppression (liquid cooling and gas detection) makes these facilities arguably safer than the gas stations or propane tanks already in the Valley.
6. The “Siting” Contradiction
He says “the technology is good, the site is wrong.”
The Hole: Batteries must be near substations to minimize line loss and infrastructure costs.
The Counter: If you move the battery 20 miles into the woods to satisfy the “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) sentiment, you have to clear-cut a 20-mile path for new high-voltage transmission lines. That creates a larger environmental impact than placing it next to an existing substation.
Summary for your “PSE Peer” perspective:
The author is using his $800 bill to gain sympathy, then pivoting to “BlackRock is getting rich” to stir up anger, while ignoring the fact that if we don’t build these, his PSE bill will actually go higher as the state is forced to buy expensive “spot market” power during peak winter freezes.