PSE in WA. loses out on cheap electricity. Amazon is the winner

Puget Sound Energy has a problem; they need to buy low-cost energy wherever they can find it. The problem is they're finding it, but then somebody else is outbidding them for it.  

Here is what happened. 

PSE was bidding on a solar energy project auction to purchase the rights to build what would be the largest solar farm in Oregon. Once completed, it would provide 1.2 gigawatts of power annually with an equivalent amount of battery backup. This will be a huge project and would have made a large impact on cheaper electricity availability to PSE customers. 

The problem is they were outbid by Amazon. Let's be real here; Amazon has way deeper pockets than PSE. PSE's final bid on the project was $82 million, Amazon's bid was $83 million.  Matt Steuerwalt, senior vice president of external affairs at PSE Said “We are used to being kind of the only buyers for these things as utilities, and now there are other buyers who are a little bigger than we are” 

According to Seattletimes.com,
‘Amazon and PSE both jumped at the rare opportunity to acquire a shovel-ready renewable energy project when Pine Gate Renewables filed for bankruptcy in November and put its Sunstone solar project up for auction. Sunstone is valuable not only for its size but for how far along in the regulatory process it is. It has land agreements, state siting approval and is queued up to connect to utility grids, all of which can save years when standing up a clean-energy project.’ 

Amazon, of course, is building data centers as fast as they can, and they are all energy hungry propositions. Anything that they can do in order to lessen the expense of electricity is going to be in their favor. Amazon is trying to buy up every watt of cheap capacity they can find, planning ahead for a future when energy can (and will) become scarce. 

So now what?

I don't know if I would say that PSE is desperate for new cheaper energy sources, but they certainly are motivated to find them. My sister is a PSE customer, and she was telling me that her energy bill from last month was three times what it normally would be. I'm not talking about the amount of electricity she used; I'm talking about the price that she is charged for each kilowatt used. I'm not optimistic that those rates are going to go down any time soon.