Tulalip Tribes and Snohomish Public Utility District

Resiliency for the Tulalip Tribes Government Center – Utility Considerations

COMMUNITY DESCRIPTION: The Tulalip (pronounced Tuh’-lay-lup) Tribes are direct descendants of and the successors in interest to the Snohomish, Snoqualmie, Skykomish, and other allied bands signatory to the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott. The treaty reserved the Tulalip Indian Reservation as a permanent homeland over which the Tulalip Tribes have retained inherent sovereign jurisdiction. The Tulalip Reservation exterior boundaries enclose a land-base of 22,000 acres rich with natural resources: marine waters, tidelands, freshwater creeks and lakes, wetlands, forests and developable land. The Tribe’s status as a sovereign entity maintains their right to self-govern as a “nation within a nation” and includes the inherent right as a government to raise revenue for the community. The reservation is governed by a board of seven directors chosen by Tribal members for three-year terms of service - a modern version of the separate Tribal Councils that governed the Tribes and allied bands for thousands of years in the Puget Sound. PROJECT DESCRIPTION: The partnership between the Tulalip Tribes and Snohomish County PUD allows two perspectives on how adding clean energy generation and storage across the Tribal Campus can support: (a) Tribal Goals for resiliency, cost savings, and carbon reduction, while also (b) providing new dispatchable utility capacity that helps SnoPUD meet its growing electrical loads, while operating a stable and secure system. This project takes a utility perspective on the Tulalip plans to add significant new clean energy infrastructure and assesses some of its benefits and consequences to the utility operations. The timeline and deliverables are expected to include the following: • December/January: Review any reports on prior preliminary design or data analysis, organize the PUD substation, meter and billing data. Assign building load synthesis projects across both Tulalip/SnoPUD groups. • Winter Quarter, 2025: Students will create simulated 1-hour load profiles that represent major Tribal Campus buildings based on billing data, national building performance data, assessment of building use cases, and other information gleaned from a site visit. Winter Deliverables: Simulated 1 hour data for a “Business as Usual” (BAU) year, and Statement of Work (SOW) for Spring. • Spring Quarter, 2025: Design and analysis addressing tasks in SOW will include power flow analysis in the BAU Case and various clean energy installation scenarios. The utility-oriented economic analysis will estimate utility costs and savings associated with using tribal resources vs. BPA and other peak power providers, as well as potential savings from deferred infrastructure investments. Final Reports and a Showcase presentation will be completed in late May or early June. • Optional K-12 Classroom and/or Adult Education Programs. Separate from this project, the Clean Energy Institute has an active grades 4th-12th “Ambassador” program that introduces clean energy ideas to young people as a way to advance community conversations and support next-generation science in schools. We also recently established a new adult-oriented clean energy education program that was piloted at a senior center. If of interest to the community, we would be happy to discuss Clean Energy community education programs with you.