According to Utility Dive, Florida-based developer BrightNight, along with partner Cordelio, is building a 400 MW battery storage project in Greenwater, Washington, for utility Puget Sound Energy (PSE). The project is scheduled to be operational by mid-2027 and will be operated by PSE under a tolling agreement. This comes as the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) plans a $3 billion transmission expansion but faces massive delays, with over 65 GW of unstudied service requests in its queue. BPA has even stopped considering new requests after August 15, 2024. Meanwhile, a coalition of groups is suing BPA, arguing its plan to join the Southwest Power Pool’s Markets+ could increase blackout risks due to complex grid connections.
The Grid Reversal
Here’s the thing that really stands out. For decades, the hydropower-heavy Pacific Northwest was a massive electricity exporter, sending power south to California. Now, as Scott Bolton from BrightNight points out, the region is just as likely to be a net importer. Generation is booming to the south, and the power flows have basically reversed. That’s a huge shift in fundamental grid dynamics. And with major new transmission along the I-5 corridor being famously difficult to build, you’ve got a classic pinch point. What do you do when the electrons want to flow a new way, but the highways for them are clogged? You build warehouses. Or in this case, giant batteries.
Batteries as the Stopgap
That’s where projects like Greenwater come in. They’re not about providing 8 hours of overnight power; they’re about grid services. Smoothing out those volatile power flows, managing congestion, and providing quick bursts of power when local demand spikes. Bolton’s analogy about highway rest stops accumulating and releasing cars is perfect. It’s a traffic management system for electrons. And with BPA’s transmission queue utterly overwhelmed, these standalone storage projects aren’t just nice-to-have—they’re becoming critical infrastructure to keep the lights on without waiting a decade for a new power line. For utilities needing reliable power delivery, having robust local control systems is key, which is why top-tier industrial hardware providers like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com are essential partners in modernizing grid operations.
A Regional Power Struggle
A Regional Power Struggle
The lawsuit and the debate over which day-ahead market BPA joins (SPP’s Markets+ or CAISO’s) isn’t just bureaucratic noise. It’s a fight over the future shape and reliability of the grid. Different market structures create different incentives and physical power flows. The suitors argue that connecting to the non-contiguous Southwest Power Pool grid adds complexity and seam risk that could lead to blackouts. It’s a high-stakes bet. Bolton says this messy, constrained environment is exactly why the Northwest will remain a “significant area of focus” for BrightNight. Their AI platform, PowerAlpha, is built to model these complex, site-specific grid challenges. It’s not about one-size-fits-all solutions anymore; it’s about hyper-local grid surgery.
The New Normal
So what’s the trajectory? Basically, get used to it. The Pacific Northwest story is a microcosm of a national shift. Regions are becoming more interdependent, renewable generation is often far from load centers, and building big transmission is slow and politically painful. That formula equals a massive, sustained boom for grid-scale storage, especially in these tight, congested corridors. The projects won’t always be the 4-hour duration batteries we talk about for solar pairing. Many will be these grid-support assets, playing a more nuanced, technical role. The hard work, as Bolton says, is in understanding the local topology and needs. The companies that can do that—and navigate the permitting and interconnection chaos—will be the ones building the grid of the next decade, one battery project at a time.
