Other utilities purchase electricity directly from other utilities, power marketers, and independent power producers or from a wholesale market organized by a regional transmission reliability organization. Some electric utilities generate all the electricity they sell using just the power plants they own. The origin of the electricity that consumers purchase varies. Expressed as energy generation, that is more than enough power for two cities the size of Seattle.Electricity comes from various sources and types of providers

Between 1983, when the Council completed its first Northwest Power Plan, and 2004 more than 2,900 megawatts of conservation have been achieved in the Northwest. At a cost that is less than the cost of building new generating plants, measures can be implemented to improve energy efficiency - insulation, double-paned windows, compact fluorescent light bulbs, low-wattage traffic lights and energy-efficient industrial motors, for example. Consistent with the Northwest Power Act of 1980, the federal law that authorized the four Northwest states to create the Council, energy conservation gets planning preference over all other sources of electricity to meet future demand for power. The resource not shown in this map - in fact, the most important resource to the Council - is energy conservation. In all, the region’s power supply totals about 32,000 megawatts. The region’s single operating nuclear plant, located in eastern Washington, provides 3.2 percent of the region’s power. About 20 percent of the region’s electricity comes from plants that burn coal, and about 21 percent comes from plants that burn natural gas. The amount can be as much as 20,000 in a wet year or as little as 12,000 in a dry year. In years when precipitation and runoff are normal, the region’s hydroelectric system can provide about 16,000 average megawatts of electricity (an average megawatt is one million watts supplied continuously for a period of one year). Most of the region’s hydropower is generated on the Columbia River and its tributaries, but there also are dams on other rivers, particularly those that empty into Puget Sound. The amount of hydropower varies with water conditions. The modern power supply also includes propeller-driven turbines that make electricity from wind.Įlectricity in the Northwest still is dominated by hydropower, which accounts for about 51 percent of the supply. These plants boil water to make steam the pressurized steam drives power-generating turbines. Primarily these were thermal plants fueled by coal, nuclear fission and natural gas. Other types of power plants were built, steadily adding to the region’s electricity supply. Then, as population increased and the regional economy grew, demand for electricity surpassed the output of the dams. Map shows all projects for most categories, but for some categories, there are minimum capacity cutoffs (to reduce the number of markers): Hydropower, above 5mw (Idaho) or 20mw (other) Natural Gas & Wind, above 10mw Biomass, above 1mw.įrom the late 1800s, when the first hydropower turbines were installed on Columbia River tributaries, into the 1960s water power from dams in the Columbia River Basin provided most of the electricity in the Pacific Northwest.Data is maintained by the Power Division, map is produced by Eric Schrepel.Data also available as Excel and Google Earth KML.

Power grid power plants types