Businesses gulp down the juice

E-mail this article Print this article

While Seattle homeowners dim their lights and lower their thermostats to cope with an energy crisis, a huge proportion of the city's megawatts goes to two streets where virtually nobody lives.

According to Seattle City Light, most of the city's top power users are clustered along East Marginal Way and along Fifth Avenue in downtown Seattle, where individual buildings suck up enough electricity to power a good-sized town. The industrial users are clustered in a narrow corridor extending from Harbor Island to Boeing Field. Here Seattle's hydropower is used to manufacture everything from flour to airplanes.

Predictably, the leading commercial users are the skyscrapers that line Fifth Avenue. These two clusters of enterprise consume a major proportion of Seattle's power supply. City Light says 15 percent of its load goes to industry, 35 percent to commercial businesses and 50 percent to residential users.

Boeing, for example, uses 1,356,000 megawatt hours of electricity per year - most of it powering machines, lighting and air conditioning. Most of that power is provided by Puget Sound Energy, a private utility that declines to reveal its top power users.

Seattle City Light, a city-owned utility that provided that information under the state's public-records act, says its largest single industrial customer is Birmingham Steel. Birmingham used 328,162 megawatt hours in 1999 - 27,000 times the average household use and more than twice the consumption of the second-highest industrial user.

Most of that power is wired into three big, graphite rods that, 25 times a day, are lowered into a huge pot filled with more than 100 tons of scrap metal. The temperature reaches 18,000 degrees, melting the scrap metal amid a light show of flame and sparks. Less than an hour later, yesterday's discards are transformed into 110 tons of "new" steel.

"We recycle 24,000 cars per month," says Ray Lepp, Birmingham vice president and manager. "We recycle appliances and tin cans and all the guns seized by the Seattle Police Department."

Down the road, other plants use the electric power to drive grinders, pumps, air conditioning, refrigeration and more.

It's no accident they are clustered along East Marginal Way. That corridor provides easy access to the port and railroad, allowing for transportation of raw materials and finished products. But for energy-intensive companies such as Birmingham, a major factor is cheap, dependable electricity.

"Obviously, power is important," Lepp says. "We produce a commodity in a highly competitive global market. If our power rates go up 50 percent, it's a serious concern."

Unusually reliable power

It's also not an accident that those skyscrapers are clustered downtown. Nearly a century ago, City Light founder J.D. Ross understood that a major commercial center would need a reliable source of electricity.

"He built the beginnings of a downtown power network," says City Light spokesman Bob Royer. "It was a highly redundant system with lots of feeder lines so that if one line fails, power is not interrupted."

That cheap, reliable system is one reason developers favored Seattle, Royer says, and building operators agree.

"Downtown Seattle is one of the few cities to offer that kind of reliability," says Don Wise of Unico Properties, which manages several downtown office buildings.

Each of those skyscrapers gobbles up enough power for 1,000 or more homes.

Here is a sampling of the top industrial users, their 1999 consumption in megawatt-hours (mwhs), and how they're trying to conserve power:

• Birmingham Steel:

328,162 mwhs. The huge plant, just south of the West Seattle Bridge, has been operating since 1904, recycling scrap metal into rebar and other steel products - mostly for construction.

Since Birmingham took over in 1991, the company has spent $112 million on modernization, much of it aimed at increased efficiency, says Lepp. It has reduced power consumption by 10 percent with devices such as high-efficiency pumps and more effective use of oxygen in the melting process.

• Saint Gobain Containers

(formerly Ball Foster Glass): 143,787 mwhs. The local glass manufacturer was recently bought by a French company and now employs 430 people making wine bottles and other glass containers. The company uses electricity to heat sand and other raw materials to about 2,600 degrees, melting it into glass. The company is constantly looking for ways to make its furnaces more efficient, says spokesperson Tina Gaines.

• Boeing:

165,961 mwhs in its Seattle plants; 1,356,000 mwhs overall. With 75,000 employees, five plants and scores of buildings around the region, Boeing is the million-megawatt gorilla of Puget Sound. Consumption at its Seattle sites is dwarfed by usage in Everett and South King County.

The company says 35 percent of its power is used for manufacturing, 25 percent for heat and air conditioning, 30 percent for lighting and 10 percent for computing.

The single-biggest culprit is probably the wind tunnel at Boeing Field, where a 55,000-horsepower motor simulates air speed for testing airplane designs.

"We replaced the motor with a more energy-efficient motor a few years ago," says Boeing spokesman Dean Tougas.

• Ash Grove Cement:

85,846 mwhs. The company uses electricity to grind limestone and other raw materials into powder, then to process it in high-temperature kilns that produce 2,000 tons of concrete per day.

Electricity is a major component in the budget, says plant manager Henrik Voldbaek. "... We have the lowest power consumption in the nation. But we're always looking for ways to make the process more efficient."

• Fisher Flouring Mills:

27,199 mwhs. For centuries, flour mills were driven by waterwheels. Today Northwest waterpower produces the megawatts that grind Northwest wheat into as much as 1.6 million pounds of flour per day.

The mill has occupied its Harbor Island site since 1913, says Fisher vice president Kendall McFall. "We've invested money in engineering studies. Grinding flour is what it is, but we've installed energy-saving lights and more efficient fans."

• Todd Pacific Shipyards:

25,879 mwhs. In addition to lighting and heat, electricity runs the pumps that remove water from three enormous dry docks.

"The pumps are the biggest consumers," says executive Steve Welch. "We're studying ways to operate the docks differently."

• Associated Grocers:

20,911 mwhs. The grocery chain operates a 300,000-square-foot refrigerated warehouse near Boeing Field, the largest such freezer-chilling operation in the city.

Manager Ray Gooding says the company has cut back on lighting and installed computers to increase the efficiency of fans and refrigeration, earning the company a city conservation award last year.

• Bank of America Tower

(formerly Columbia Center): 30,965 mwhs. With 76 stories and 2 million square feet of space, it's not surprising that Seattle's tallest building is also its biggest commercial power user.

Larry Hood of Equity Office, which owns and manages the building, says the main culprit is lights. Computer systems in the building can now "sweep" the building, one floor at a time, turning lights on and off at preset times. That time varies from one floor to another, he says.

• US Bank Center Building:

27,506 mwhs. The skyscraper at Fifth and Pike is unusual in that it is open about 18 hours a day rather than business hours only, says Betsy Sutherland, a vice president at Bentall, the building manager.

As in other skyscrapers, the biggest energy-user is air conditioning, she says. That system is monitored around-the-clock. But conservation gains have been offset by tenants who need ever-higher amounts of power to run Internet servers and other computer systems, she says.

• Starbucks Center:

21,631 mwhs. The sprawling, 1.8 million-square-foot building houses the Starbucks Coffee headquarters, Sears, Office Max and more - a total of 2,500 office workers, says Angi Davis of First & Utah Associates, the building owner. The company has made "a huge commitment to conservation," Davis says, dimming lights and signs, installing a system for monitoring power consumption.

These are Seattle City Light's top 10 industrial power users (1999 usage):

1. Birmingham Steel - 328,162 megawatt hours*

2. Saint Gobain Containers (formerly Ball Foster Glass) - 143,787 mwh

3. Boeing Puget Sound Aircraft and Missiles - 99,177 mwh

4. Ash Grove Cement - 85,846 mwh

5. La Farge Corporation (cement) - 45,595 mwh

6. Boeing Commercial - 43,354 mwh

7. Fisher Flouring Mills - 27,199 mwh

8. Todd Pacific Shipyards - 25,879

9. James Hardie Gypsum - 23,344

10. Associated Grocers - 20,911

*One megawatt hour equals 1,000 kilowatt hours

Seattle City Light's top 10 commercial power users (1999 usage):

1. Bank of America Tower (formerly Columbia Center), Fifth Avenue and Cherry Street - 30,965 megawatt hours*

2. US Bank Center Building (City Centre), Fifth Avenue and Pike Street - 27,506 mwh

3. Key Tower, Fifth Avenue and Cherry Street - 24,029 mwh

4. Boeing Commercial, 1135 S. Webster St. - 23,430 mwh

5. Two Union Square, Sixth Avenue and Union Street - 22,451 mwh

6. Starbucks Center, First Avenue South and Utah Avenue South - 21,631 mwh

7. Sixth & Virginia, Sixth Avenue and Virginia Street - 20,842 mwh

8. Wells Fargo Center (formerly First Interstate Center), Third Avenue and Madison Street - 20,751 mwh

9. U S West Communications, Sixth Avenue and Pine Street - 19,618 mwh

10. Rainier Tower, Fifth Avenue and Union Street - 18,766 mwh

*One megawatt hour equals 1,000 kilowatt hours

Information in this article, originally published March 18, was corrected March 19. Seattle City Light is a city-owned public utility. An earlier version of this article reported otherwise.