Benton PUD provides electricity to nearly 59,000 customer meters over a 927 square mile service territory utilizing more than 3,100 circuit miles of high and low voltage cables and wires. The average power flow through our delivery systems on an annual basis is 210 million watts (megawatts) with our highest one-hour demand reaching 490 megawatts during the June 2021 heat dome event.

While the Pacific Northwest is traditionally a winter-peaking region, Benton PUD’s outsized summer demand is what sets us apart. Yes, winter cold snaps can strain our system capacity with demand climbing as high as 390 megawatts, but it’s air conditioning and large irrigation pumping on hot summer days that really tests our mettle.

As is the case with most utilities, Benton PUD’s largest customer class is the residential sector representing 40% of energy consumed on an annual basis followed by business and industry at 35%.

Farm customers

What’s less widely known is while our large farm customers only pump water for part of the year, irrigated agriculture represents about 25% of our annual energy sales. And during extreme heat, water delivery and crop storage can account for over 180 megawatts or 37% of maximum demand. 

Another noteworthy point is something almost unheard of elsewhere: Our farmers don’t just draw enormous volumes of water from the Columbia River, they pump it uphill. In some cases, lifting water to the 1,600-foot elevation in the Horse Heaven Hills, a remarkable demonstration of ingenuity and determination.

That speaks volumes about the quality of the soil and growing conditions and explains why Benton County supports more than 200,000 acres of irrigated farmland, an area equivalent to nearly four Seattles. With hundreds of millions of dollars in crops at stake, it’s no exaggeration to say that without affordable and reliable electricity, irrigated agriculture in much of south Benton County simply wouldn’t be possible at the scale we see today.

Building redundancy

One of Benton PUD’s strategic goals is to “strive to meet 21st century power grid expectations,” which means designing, building and operating delivery systems that are as close to always-on as possible, while keeping customer rates affordable and fair. An important way we pursue this goal is by building redundancy into our delivery systems, and we are doing this strategically across both our transmission and distribution networks.

In 2025, we completed construction and interconnection of a 14-mile, 115-kilovolt transmission line, providing a redundant regional grid interconnection for our Finley area and southeast county farm customers. This follows the 2018 construction of an 8.5-mile transmission line in south-central Benton County which provides redundancy for irrigated agriculture as well as residential and commercial customers located between Highway 221 and Interstate 82.   

Next up is a new transmission line scheduled for construction between the Red Mountain area and Dallas Road in 2027 where we plan to interconnect with a line owned by Richland Energy Services (RES). 

Our partnership with RES is a testimony to the cooperative spirit of public power utilities and how our business models enable collaboration for the long-term mutual benefit of our respective customers.  

Benton PUD is also planning to build a new transmission line to provide a redundant regional grid interconnection for the Prosser community. This project is contingent on the Bonneville Power Administration completing its “South of Tri-Cities Reinforcement Project” in the Webber Canyon area, currently scheduled to come online in spring 2028.

80th anniversary

2026 will mark the 80th anniversary for Benton PUD which became a locally-owned, not-for-profit utility on Sept. 12, 1946. 

While many of the components we have deployed in our delivery systems over the decades are long-lived assets, one of our ongoing challenges is staying ahead of the inevitable end-of-life for each one. In an economically designed system, equipment failures can and do occur, but when they do, it is critically important they happen safely and with minimal disruption to electric service. 

Monitoring systems

While it’s not possible to keep constant watch over every component across the 3,100 circuit miles of our transmission and distribution systems, we have significantly increased system “visibility” through advanced monitoring technologies.

Regular reporting of electrical pressure (voltage) and flow (current) is essential to safe, efficient operations, and it allows us to maximize the capacity of existing infrastructure before investing in costly upgrades.

More than 30 years ago, Benton PUD deployed a wireless Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system that currently provides real-time visibility into all 39 of our substations and hundreds of critical components across our service area. 

Fifteen years ago, we strengthened this capability with a wireless Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) system, which delivers time-synchronized power-flow data and alarm statuses from 100% of our customer locations.

In addition to helping Benton PUD keep a finger on the pulse of our electric systems, AMI also empowers our customers by giving them access to detailed electricity-usage data and providing real-time outage and restoration notifications through our SmartHub app on their smartphone or other devices.

In recent years, Benton PUD has leveraged the more than 560 miles of our world-class, high-speed fiber-optic network, developed over 25 years as a wholesale broadband provider, to significantly expand our real-time data retrieval capabilities. 

Combined with planned investments in an upgraded SCADA communications network, our visibility into system conditions and our ability to monitor and better secure field assets will be greatly enhanced over the next five years.

State goals

Washington’s aggressive clean-energy goals and 100% carbon-free electricity mandate aim to accelerate electrification of transportation and natural-gas end uses, with policymakers insisting statewide electricity demand needs to double by 2050. So far, Benton PUD is not seeing that surge materialize with a very modest 0.2% per year growth rate and no clear sign customers are eager to give up natural gas or rapidly transition to electric vehicles.

While the pace could shift over time, Benton PUD’s culture of continuous improvement, supported by strategic investments in redundancy and advanced system monitoring, keeps us ahead of evolving needs. Whatever form electrification ultimately takes, and whenever it arrives, we are prepared and ready to power our community’s future.

Rick Dunn is Benton PUD’s general manager.