Battles over energy projects are erupting across Western WA

SNOQUALMIE - When residents discovered plans for a 45-acre battery facility near their homes, hundreds marched in protest through the usually sleepy downtown. County officials said they received death threats over the project. Snoqualmie passed a moratorium banning such facilities for a year, although it is unclear it would apply in this case.

This is the third attempt to site a large battery facility in King County to help power the grid. The first two in Renton and Covington fizzled after also facing intense public backlash.

Utility officials and developers say this is just the beginning.

"There's going to be a need for not just one or two or five projects, but dozens of projects across the region," said Hans Detweiler, lead developer for Jupiter Power, the company proposing the battery project near Snoqualmie.

Washington's clean energy transition was always going to require major infrastructure, and the state's geography is determining what gets put where. While wind turbines and solar panels operate better east of the Cascades, batteries to harness that energy are largely needed west.

But west of the mountains, battery projects are colliding with tightly packed trees and rivers, denser neighborhoods and more angry residents.

Large-scale battery sites, or Battery Energy Storage Systems, are new to Washington, and residents are scared about batteries catching fire, an inherent risk to the technology, experts say, although it is becoming rarer.

The thing about rare, Snoqualmie residents say, is that it's not never, and many are unwilling to put their health and safety on the line to solve grid problems they've never experienced. Fear is spreading rapidly beyond the town and neighboring cities are moving to ban the facilities preemptively.

Puget Sound Energy, which plans to lease the Snoqualmie battery facility, said many people opposed to battery projects supported policies that made them necessary. Now, the utility said, those communities must accept new infrastructure or face the rising risk of outages at the worst possible times.

Why are batteries coming?

PSE, the state's largest utility, faced a daunting challenge once Washington passed its landmark Clean Energy Transformation Act in 2019.

The law required utilities to get 80% of their electricity from clean sources by 2030. PSE was at about 26% at the time. Unlike public utilities, the privately owned company doesn't get the same preferential access to the region's hydropower.

PSE is removing coal from its electric supply and replacing a chunk of it with wind and solar. And nearly all of those panels and turbines are built east of the Cascades where the sun shines brighter and the wind blows harder.

Bringing that power over the mountains is the hard part. There are limited passages, and existing transmission lines are maxed out during the times when people use electricity the most, said Randy Hardy, an energy consultant and former head of the Bonneville Power Administration, the federal agency that operates most of the region's transmission.

"The Northwest is probably the most difficult area in the country to build new renewables because of the Cascade Mountains," Hardy said.

PSE is facing a 2 gigawatt gap in power by 2030 - nearly twice the electricity Seattle uses on average to keep the lights on. The entire Pacific Northwest faces a 9 gigawatt shortfall. Without a solution, residents and businesses could face outages during extreme temperatures.

So, PSE is turning to batteries. They would allow the utility to bring power over the Cascades when transmission is available, store it and use it when lines are tied up.

Batteries are "the one thing" the west side of the Cascades has to accommodate in terms of clean energy infrastructure, said Matt Steuerwalt, PSE's Senior Vice President of External Affairs.

"If we're asking people who live far away to support the transition that we are hoping for, why aren't we asking ourselves to support the same stuff?" Steuerwalt said, referring to wind and solar on the east side of the state.

In total, PSE plans to add 1.5 gigawatts of new energy storage projects by 2030 - more than 10 times the capacity of Jupiter Power's project in Snoqualmie. But it's been a challenge to get its first project in King County going.

"Not appropriate here"

Jupiter Power's community meeting in Snoqualmie did not go well.

The March meeting ended with Detweiler, Jupiter's lead developer, standing on a chair and declaring it over before walking out of the room to boos, according to a King 5 video. Before that, Teresa Bechtold, a resident who attended, said another presenter told her, "It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when some of these lithium-ion batteries burn."

Jupiter Power said it couldn't verify that remark. But fear that a fire was all but inevitable spread quickly, galvanizing neighbors to form Snoqualmie Valley for Responsible Energy, a nonprofit opposing the project. The group said 650 people marched in an April protest downtown. Rajshree Jadeja was there with her daughter Meera, who was in a wheelchair.

Jadeja said her family moved to Snoqualmie 11 years ago looking for "a place to heal" after Meera was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune condition that resulted in a hemorrhaged lung.

"For Meera, this would be something she may not even be able to survive," Jadeja said, referring to smoke from a potential battery fire.

Snoqualmie residents point out that just last year, a battery storage fire burned for days in Moss Landing, Calif., triggering evacuation orders for more than 1,000 people.

Lithium-ion batteries, commonly used in large-scale storage, can catch fire and are difficult to put out. But failures became 50 times less likely between 2018 and 2024, according to Electric Power Research Institute, which recorded eight fires worldwide in 2024.

Lakshmi Srinivasan, a principal team lead at the institute, said the Moss Landing facility used a "very unusual," older design that concentrated most of its batteries into a single building. Jupiter Power says its Snoqualmie project would use outdoor, weather-sealed containers to isolate fires if they did happen.

"That container burns out, that happens in less than half a day, and it's a nonevent from a community perspective," Detweiler said.

But opponents say Jupiter's proposed location is uniquely risky, which sits in a forested area right next to Fischer Creek Park, where families bring their children to the playground. Residents say it's too close to schools, homes and Fischer Creek, a tributary of the Snoqualmie River used by spawning salmon. Jupiter Power said it would need to remove about 1,300 trees to clear the way for its batteries.

"There's lots of places where this might be appropriate. We're saying it's not appropriate here," said James Hietala, a director for Snoqualmie Valley for Responsible Energy.

But Detweiler says avoiding proximity to neighborhoods or sensitive areas is nearly impossible on the west side of the state where batteries are most needed. Jupiter Power studied 157 PSE substations in King County and found none were more than a quarter mile from homes, schools, parks or waterways.

"The sort of perfect site that's not near any of those things does not exist," Detweiler said.

Moratoriums

Under immense pressure, the Snoqualmie City Council voted last Tuesday to enact a moratorium on battery facilities for a year. At least seven other cities in King County have enacted similar temporary bans including Covington, Black Diamond, Maple Valley, Enumclaw, Renton, Auburn and North Bend, many of which don't have any projects proposed in them.

"It concerns me a lot," Steuerwalt at PSE said. You're just increasing either the cost risk or the risk that the power will go out."

Ultimately, a city ban might not matter for Jupiter Power's project, which is on unincorporated land just outside Snoqualmie. Jupiter submitted permit applications with King County in April.

Snoqualmie Valley for Responsible Energy has asked County Executive Girmay Zahilay to conduct a worst-case scenario modeling of the project before allowing it to move forward. And it has asked the state utilities commission to scrutinize the location and risk of the project.

King County Councilmember Sarah Perry, whose district includes Snoqualmie, said she's received hundreds of letters urging her to oppose Jupiter Power's project. Some, she said, have included personal attacks and threats on her life.

"There's a lot of concern and fear when things are new, and rightfully so," Perry said.

She's hopeful that a study King County is working on to analyze which locations would be best for large-scale battery facilities will help ground debates moving forward.

Perry spearheaded new county regulations in 2024 for grid-scale battery facilities, which she said are the "the most restrictive in the country." Now, she says she's trusting the process she helped set up, and hopes residents will learn about the need for batteries as well.

"If everybody in King County decides this shouldn't be near them, then we need a much larger conversation about blackouts and brownouts and how we want to meet the energy crisis that's coming," Perry said.

Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled the name of James Hietala, a director at Snoqualmie Valley for Responsible Energy.

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This story was originally published June 2, 2026 at 6:42 AM.