The following is a transcript of the July 1, 2024, episode of Public Power Now. Learn more about subscribing to Public Power Now at Publicpower.org/Podcasts. Some quotes may have been edited for clarity.
Paul Ciampoli
Welcome to the latest episode of Public Power Now. I'm Paul Ciampoli, APPA’s news director. Our guest on this episode is Dawn Lindell, the new general manager and CEO of public power utility Seattle City Light. Dawn previously joined us as a guest in the podcast in late 2022. At the time, Dawn was general manager of California public power utility, Burbank Water and Power. Dawn, thanks for returning as a guest on the podcast.
Dawn Lindell
Thank you, Paul, it's great to be with you again.
Paul Ciampoli
Dawn, to get our conversation started, I wanted to give you an opportunity to to detail your career in the utility sector leading up to your new role at Seattle City Light.
Dawn Lindell
So I've had the pleasure of leading outstanding people in the energy world for more than 25 years. I know I'm getting up there in age. I’ve been around a while. I'd like to say I started when I was four, but that wouldn't quite be accurate. Anyway, I love this business. It's real, it matters. We provide the power that enables nearly everything else. And what better mission is there? We really have a hand in almost everything that goes on in these great United States.
Prior to coming to Seattle City Light, I was able to serve as the CEO general manager for Burbank Water and Power in the media capital of the world, Burbank, California, and there I led a full service utility for both electric and water and got to work again with fabulous people. I think that is key to public power success. The kind of people that are drawn to this work are people who deeply care. They deeply care about the expertise in their relative areas, and they care very deeply about the communities in which they serve. Prior to that, I worked for a federal utility, Western Area Power Administration.
WAPA is a $1.3 billion utility, at least it was when I worked there -- it's probably more now -- serving 15 states by marketing the power that comes off of 57 federal hydroelectric dams and by serving as the operator of the transmission and the operator of the balancing authorities that balance load on receiving that power. There, I started as the chief information officer. I was a chief information officer...for about 15 years of my career, partly at WAPA and partly at Colorado Springs Utilities.
Then at WAPA I had the opportunity to serve as the Chief Operating Officer for a stint before taking over the Sierra Nevada region as the Senior VP Regional manager, running that regional utility that covers California and Nevada and then taking on the role of the Rocky Mountain Regional Manager and senior vice president. There, I managed the marketing of power from 27 dams in four states, oversaw the grid operation and maintenance in six states and then ran two balancing authorities, one out of Loveland, Colorado, and one out of Phoenix, Arizona, balancing load for utilities across the 10-state footprint.
And prior to that, I started my career at Colorado Springs Utilities and there I got to serve in the role of leading the customer service organization, did a stint in operations and then started in on my IT leadership role in the Chief Information Officer role there, which is called the General manager of IT. The really cool thing about coming out of that technology role -- in that role you see the whole utility, every bit of it operationally and business support wise.
So you really get to know the utility inside out by providing the technology that powers it and that's a great view to have for eventually getting into that Chief Executive Officer role. One of my coolest experiences though was at WAPA. There they do live line work on the transmission lines and I was up in a bucket truck for live line work on a 230-kV line. I was able to touch the line and pull my hand away, literally holding a bolt of lightning in my hand. That's the power of of electricity, and it was an amazing and a little bit scary experience. It deepened my respect for those in the craft roles in our organizations because those folks literally deal with a really dangerous job and make the magic happen.
Paul Ciampoli
I wanted to give you the opportunity to talk about what your immediate priorities have been as the new general manager and CEO of the utility.
Dawn Lindell
Well, I get to work here in the Emerald City, in the Evergreen State of Seattle here -- while the state is Washington, obviously -- the city is Seattle. I have first focused on learning. I had not worked in the Northwest before -- been here, visited many times, which is part of the draw for me. But I've spent time meeting leaders in city, state, tribal, business, environmental and non-profit roles so that I can understand their concerns, issues and priorities for how they interact with Seattle City Light.
I've spent time with our amazing employees as they continue to work their magic in whatever roles they're doing, and then learning about Seattle and also the other surrounding communities to whom we provide power. It enabled me to get a wide variety of perspectives. Clearly some would be conflicting and that's true, but all are valid and that helps to drive our strategic plan.
So my second priority has been creating an effective strategic plan update. We do a strategic plan in a full way every six years and then every two years we do an update. This is the last update on the most recent strategic plan. And I wanted to make sure because of the changes in the industry, the changes that we're seeing weather wise, the changes post pandemic with supply chain, I wanted to make sure that we were creating a plan that was up to date and reflected our new reality. City Light is a traditionally winter peaking utility, but we're also seeing our summer loads increasing and we're seeing those extreme weather events occurring just like they are in the rest of the country where the weather events are stronger, they last longer and they cover a wider regional space.
And that really provides some additional challenge since we have a more difficult time buying the additional power we need to overcome those weather events and ensure reliability. We have to buy that from outside of our local region because everyone's experiencing those same weather events, whereas we used to be able to cover for each other. And while we can use strategies like saving our hydropower by buying some low cost solar when it's available so that we have those hydropower megawatts to use when we need them, we've also got to hedge appropriately and we've got to buy energy on the market as soon as it becomes clear that a weather event is on its way before we see the prices really soar due to the weather event.
This past January, City Light traders did an amazing job making $14,000 actually, after all settlements were in for Martin Luther King Junior Day weekend when we had a severe cold spell come into the Northwest region. We can compare that performance to neighboring utilities that spent $35 million and even as much as $50 million having to procure power on the market because they didn't have those hydropower megawatts to throw at the issue. We were very lucky and skilled, frankly in our power marketing area that we were able to do that.
The third priority for me has been identifying new generation sources. So we're known in Seattle for being on the leading edge in many industries including Microsoft, Amazon, Costco, our fabulous coffee successes that have originated here in this area. We need that type of ingenuity on the problems and issues that we are facing as the nation moves toward cleaner energy and doing that in an affordable and reliable way, which I think is the adaptive challenge of our time. The Pacific Northwest is filled with beautiful lakes and rivers, but unfortunately, across most of the region we are experiencing drought conditions which greatly affect the hydropower production. With 88% of our resources coming from hydropower, that can cause quite a bit of concern and it certainly does. Then we've got a significant increase in load. In 2022 when we did our IRP update, our integrated resources plan update, we thought we needed in the 10 years following that IRP, we thought we needed to add about 400 megawatts.
With the changes that we've made locally in building electrification and transportation electrification legislation, we now have to in the next 10 years come up with more than 1,800 new megawatts plus another 100 plus megawatts of savings of conservation. So in just two years, we've seen a radical change driven by that legislation in the amount of load that we can expect to see. So to meet that increasing demand and also cover for poor water years and decreasing resources, we've got to diversify and expand our mix of power sources by pursuing purchase power agreements and exploring options like geothermal, wind, solar combined with battery storage.
Then we need to cast a wider net because we need additional baseload resource. We're not going to be able to make that up in all weather variable resources. So we're going to explore things like additional geothermal, small modular reactors, microgrids, biofuels. Long term battery storage is something we'll also keep our eye on, which is not generation, but which can perhaps help us cover a peaking gap. Some good news on the retired battery problem because as we look at batteries, everyone always talks about, yeah, we're going to have all these lithium ion batteries, and then what are we going to do as these batteries reach their end of life?
What are we going to do with the materials? So I was just reading a Time article on the top 100 companies, one of which was a company called Redwood Materials founded by Tesla co-founder JB Straubel. And that company mines up to 95% of the key elements from used batteries for recycling and reuse to build additional batteries. So I'm really glad to see that start to happen. We don't want to create a worse problem or another problem by completing what we need to do to meet our adaptive challenge. And I want to talk a little bit about biofuels because while they still emit, they're made from substances that are emitting anyway, whether we burn them or not. So I think that's really worth exploring. And there's a company called Climeworks in Iceland that continues to evolve carbon capture and storage technologies.
So people always ask, well, if you capture the carbon, what are you going do with it? Turns out the plants love carbon rich soil. One company called Boomitra is helping farmers trap more carbon in the soil, which increases their yields. That sounds just like the sort of winning solution we need to focus on today as we figure out this problem. And then my final focus area has been on conserving energy. We're a bit behind in this area. We don't have a demand response rate for our business customers and we also don't have time of use rates implemented.
I think those are two strategies that will really enable us to gain some additional conservation. So we're going to focus on doing that in 2025 and into 2026.
Paul Ciampoli
You obviously covered a lot of ground and a lot of really useful information I think for our listeners. But one of the things that jumped out at me is the development of IRPs. Based on my interviews with executives such as yourself of public power utilities, it seems like it's fair to say that given all of the variables that are now in the mix in terms of energy resource planning, IRPs are becoming increasingly challenging in terms of trying to forecast what's going to happen even short term. Is that fair to say?
Dawn Lindell
Oh my gosh, isn't that the truth? Interestingly enough, the state of Washington requires an IRP every two years. I was used to an IRP every five years and actually for a long time it maybe seemed unnecessary to do it every two years because the forecast was relatively flat. That has certainly changed in the last two years and we've seen this big jump. So I think it behooves us as an industry to look at this a little more frequently just because of the incredible changes we're seeing being driven across the nation.
Paul Ciampoli
In terms of my research preparing for this interview, one of the things that jumped out at me is the fact that Seattle City Light has been proactive when it comes to planning for the growth of transportation electrification. So could you offer additional details on those efforts?
Dawn Lindell
There is no mistaking that transportation electrification is bustling in the Seattle area. So right now, 26.2%, which is slightly more than one in four new passenger vehicles registered here, are battery electric vehicles. And no, not all are Teslas, though I do personally own a Tesla. But that's not the only transportation that is making the transition to electric. Transportation in this region accounts for 62% of greenhouse gas emissions. So we're partnering with our local public Transit Authority to ensure that all communities benefit. We're electrifying our buses and the charging infrastructure was provided by and is powered by Seattle City Light. For the 40 buses that are already all electric, those that pilot on the buses is proving quite informational. The range has not proven to be quite as long as expected and that's helping us plan better on the number of buses that we potentially need.
We're also providing bus manufacturing vendors with the information so they can continue to improve their product. Last night I attended a celebration for helping to electrify our port, our T5, our Terminal 5 port, which is a big cargo port and it is a first in the nation port for ensuring that every ship that comes in will be onshore power, electric shore power, instead of burning diesel in the port so that they can reduce greenhouse gases. We've done this for two of our three cruise ship terminals as well, and we're working on that third one. And even our regional ferry system, which is the largest ferry system in the country, is preparing to go hybrid with our help.
We are seeing increased load. Transportation accounts for about a 70% increase in load over our 2022 plan in which we were already accounting for a large EV load. But there's no mistaking that transportation electrification is a key strategy for us. It's going to take ingenuity and innovation to create our energy future in a reliable and affordable and planet sustaining way.
In one study it shows that we're going to need to add 8,000 charging stations by 2030. But a second study is even scarier. It shows we need to add 11,000 charging stations by 2030. That is a lot of future to prepare for. The state of Washington is providing funding for a little over 1,500 of those charging stations in the Seattle area.
We're going to continue to pursue grants wherever possible and preparing for that future also includes making the right legislative policies that enable this to happen.
Developing a strong resilient distribution grid that's ready to take on the demands of electrification, planning for climate change, which impacts our reliability and impacts our cost, and partnering on new transmission and generation opportunities so that we can keep the costs as low as possible. Building tomorrow's workforce, which needs to be strong in analytics, strong in technology and strong in agility and then involving the community in the process.
And so on that last note, transportation electrification is a transformative opportunity that allows us to re-envision energy services and elevate communities, underserved and underrepresented populations like Black, Indigenous and other people of color, immigrants, refugees, people with low incomes, youth, English language learners.
These are folks who are more likely to be impacted by the harms of fossil fuel use and unfairly carry more health, environmental and economic burdens as a result. So our transportation electrification plan is an opportunity to meet their needs and collaborate to bring resources directly to those communities by righting historical wrongs and investing in an energy future that can benefit everyone. That is a significant part of our focus.
Paul Ciampoli
One of the things that jumped out at me as I prepared for this Q&A with you is the fact that Seattle City Light has earned high marks from J.D. Power when it comes to business as well as residential utility customer satisfaction. So can you offer additional details on the steps the utility's taken to achieve these high levels of customer satisfaction?
Dawn Lindell
First and foremost, we believe that customer service is everyone's job, not just our customer service team. In fact, customer first is one of the key values of the organization. So we pledge to be approachable and respectful and responsive to both residential and business customers. And that includes standing up a customer experience team to better understand the challenges our customers face in setting up accounts and paying their bills and interacting with our employees so that we can live that experience and make it better and receive the feedback that isn't always positive.
It means we also use plain language in our communications to be equitable and accessible to all. And with over 20% of Seattle residents speaking languages other than English at home, we incorporate language access into our business practices to provide inclusive communications and equitable service delivery to the diverse communities that we serve. For our business customers, we have a great team here that's entirely committed to advocating on behalf of their customers to give them a voice within their organization to help them feel understood and valued. Each representative is responsible for designated industry sectors so they can hone in on the needs of their assigned customers. And this goes beyond just our largest customers. We have team members who work solely with small and with medium sized businesses, which we know have their own unique challenges.
Finally, it's important to me and our team to keep open lines of communication and be transparent with our customers. We want to be their first, best source of information. We want them to know what is coming and not to have them be surprised. So this includes hosting an annual key customer forum with an agenda based on what customers want to learn more about.
Paul Ciampoli
For my last question in this interview, I wanted to zoom out a little bit and give you the opportunity to discuss what you see as the long-term challenges, as well as opportunities facing the utility sector in the Pacific Northwest region. And more specifically elaborate on how you see Seattle City Light positioned to successfully meet those challenges and embrace opportunities.
Dawn Lindell
Sure, Paul, and boy, is that a moving target. But thinking about this, the first major challenge is having enough energy capacity to meet the growing load in the region reliably, affordably and sustainably. So in 2005, Seattle City Light became the first utility to reach full carbon neutrality.
This means we supply 96% carbon free energy. And then we use offsets not only to cover the other 4%, but also to offset our travel, our large fleet vehicles that still run on fossil fuels and any other greenhouse gas that we generate. Washington is leading the charge in aggressively addressing climate change and that has both challenges and opportunities for us. So the legislative changes have caused our EV charging load forecast to rise by 70% in the next decade and our building electrification load is tripling in that same time frame. So as I mentioned, instead of adding 400 megawatts, we know we've got to add over 1,800 megawatts in the next 10 years. And to meet that need, we have to find carbon free resources, procure them and have transmission paths to wheel that energy home. This applies to us and to other utilities in our region and some other utilities don't have the owned hydro that we have and they also have to convert from fossil fuels to clean energy.
This leads me to the second long term challenge, which is cost pressures. The average cost per MW in the region in 2021 was around $21.00 on the market. Last year it was over $80.00 and this year it's in the mid $70.00 range in the Northwest. So that is a significant increase in cost. Meanwhile, electric equipment components have seen inflation of 30% to 300% since 2020 depending on the part.
And finally, in Seattle, we have many miles of conductor that have reached the end of useful life and we need to build 4 new substations to meet the load. So all of that is a significant cost pressure. Then the third major challenge is climate change with weather systems that cause outages and that have caused us to procure additional energy at high prices. These weather events, as I've mentioned, are stronger, longer and larger. And so we're competing with other regional utilities for the same power, and we're all having to go outside the region to get it. We've got to think a little bit more regionally and partner together to bring in the resources that we need so that we can keep our costs down.
Finally, we need to be thinking about the changing technology and the skill sets we need to build over the next decade or two. We need to train our workforce to meet those needs and hire with an eye toward employees who have the agility to shift focus to meet the changing needs.
So here at Seattle City Light, we're planning for the future. We're completing a new long term forecast annually to help ensure we stay up with the changing industry landscape and a new IRP every two years. We're casting that wide net in considering a multitude of generation options for the long term, as I've already talked about. And we're also involving the many communities in our decision making and our exploration that includes businesses big and small, residential and environmental groups, nonprofits, and we're actively seeking out underserved and undersupported communities through our Department of Neighborhoods... in the city.
And we're staying active with APPA and other industry groups sharing information and receiving it so we can continue to try new things with less expense and provide the industry with additional information as we learn it. We love the community in this industry and we love APPA for helping to provide that community. There is a lot of untapped potential in the Pacific Northwest in terms of human ingenuity and resources that we should be exploring. There are actually four different Seattle companies that are currently working on fusion, for example. And so we're keeping our eye on what they do and I think that will be critical for us as well.
Finally, we're on a steady rate path and that rate path is higher than it's been in the past, but we believe we're doing a rate path that is reasonable and that will help us to meet these challenges. We're doing so in a way that's open and transparent and communicating on those challenges. We're engaging our public in helping us to meet the needs through demand response and through time of use. And we are very open to input from any sector that we serve and even sectors that we don't serve. We are just wide open and ready to be responsive to those good ideas as they come in. So I think we're ready to tackle these challenges. City Light has a history of being an industry leader and I'm really proud to be working here to continue making history in this public power industry.
Paul Ciampoli
Dawn, I've really enjoyed this conversation. We've covered a lot of ground, obviously, but would love to have you back perhaps around this time next year. We could have you come back for the third time as a guest. And it sounds like there's plenty of topics that we can either revisit or explore new areas that Seattle City Light is involved in.
Dawn Lindell
I would love that. Thank you so much.
Paul Ciampoli
Thanks for listening to this episode of Public Power Now, which is produced by Julio Guerrero, Graphic and Digital Designer at APPA. I'm Paul Ciampoli, and we'll be back next week with more from the world of public power.
