Nucor / Seattle City Light cogeneration project gets approval

| Utilities | West Seattle businesses | West Seattle news

It’s been years in the making. Today the City Council approved a plan to allow West Seattle’s Nucor plant to get energy-saving credit for energy generation involving waste heat – “cogeneration” – and the project could be up and running next year. Seattle City Light writes about it on its Power Lines site; as pointed out therein, Nucor is City Light’s biggest customer. There are even more details in this slide deck from a presentation to a City Council committee earlier this year.

Jesse February 5, 2013 (9:40 am)

This is very exciting to see.
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It’s fascinating that they have labeled this as a conservation project in order to get around the power monopoly regulations. This is common technology in Europe but typically is difficult to implement in the USA since the regulations prevent companies like this from producing power unless they are a utility.
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I hope we’ll see lots more of these types of projects in the future.