PSE’s Lower Snake River Wind Facility surpasses 10,000,000 Megawatt Hours
PSE’s owned and operated Lower Snake River wind facility has generated over 10 million megawatt hours since it first started operating in 2012. Every year, the facility generates on average enough electricity to serve about 70,000 households. This clean energy avoids about 300,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions per year1.
Operating in southeast Washington near Pomeroy, the Lower Snake River wind facility is PSE’s largest wind farm with a capacity to generate 342.7 megawatts of clean renewable energy from Washington winds. The wind farm directly employees 20 people.
“We really are excited to see that our wind facilities are making a difference in the production of clean energy for our company and our customers,保罗·史密斯说, who oversees the PSE Lower Snake River, 霍普金斯脊, and Wild Horse wind facilities.
We first started generating energy from the Lower Snake River Wind Facility in 2012 and have operated continuously since. Annually the wind farm produces an average of 811,676 megawatt hours annually. The Lower Snake River wind facility saw the best wind year in 2020 and 2024 is looking great!
There were several factors that played a role in the Lower Snake River wind farm achieving this stellar accomplishment. One reason is the proactive turbine maintenance that our crews perform when the winds are blowing less than 33 miles an hour. They also schedule to replace major components before a failure occurs to ensure the turbines are working in proper condition when they are needed most.
Another factor for success is that our great crew and management team intentionally plan any major outages at the wind farm during low wind months to ensure the best output of the facility.
“We know our customers want clean, reliable energy and our wind farms are helping us achieve that,” said Mark Carlson, 导演, Generation and Natural Gas Storage.
1Avoided emissions were calculated assuming the electricity would need to be replaced with “unspecified” market purchases using Equation 4 at Washington Administrative Code 173-444-040 (4)