Method, caveats, and every source

About this site

A citizen’s field guide, built from the public record

This site was put together in September 2026 by a PSE customer who wanted the rate story, the ownership story and the public-power story in one place, with every number traceable to a document. Research, data compilation, charts, maps and code were produced with the assistance of Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, working from the public documents listed below.

Method

• Primary sources first. Rates and bill impacts come from UTC orders and PSE’s own tariff notices; ownership, revenue, customers and executive pay from SEC Form 10-K filings; fuel mix from the Washington Department of Commerce’s statutory disclosure; national prices from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
• Calculated figures are labelled. Neighbouring-utility bills at 800 kWh are computed from published tariffs (fixed charge plus energy blocks, taxes excluded). The Jan 2026 typical bill is PSE’s Nov 2025 pre-order bill plus the UTC-approved net change. 2027–2029 bills add PSE’s stated requests and are not approved. Per-customer costs on the ownership page spread a dollar figure evenly across PSE’s 2.13 million electric and gas accounts.
• Dates are as of Sept 11, 2026. Rates change twice a year or more; the rate case is live; PSE advisory meeting dates marked tentative may move. Always follow the source link before relying on a number.

Worth double-checking

These items rest on secondary sources, approximations, or facts that were still unresolved at publication. Treat them as the least certain claims on the site.

• Ownership percentages. The stakes shown for OMERS, BCI, Macquarie, Ontario Teachers’, AIMCo and PGGM come from the 2019 Form 10-K and trade-press reports of the February 2022 sale. The fiscal 2025 10-K names the six owners but does not publish percentages, so the current split may differ by a few points.
• Thurston County’s 2020 public-power vote. It is described here as having failed, based on the Power to the PUBLIC! campaign’s own post-election statement. The certified county result was not retrieved; check results.vote.wa.gov for the November 3, 2020 election.
• Initiative 2066. No Washington Supreme Court ruling on the natural-gas initiative had been found as of Sept 11, 2026. The court heard argument on Jan 22, 2026; a decision could change what HB 1589 requires of PSE and how the UTC treats gas-plant depreciation.
• Plant locations on the map. Generation markers are placed by town or river reach, not surveyed coordinates, and are accurate to a few miles. Capacities and ownership shares are from the 10-K and are exact.
• Washington’s 2021–2023 annual prices. These three points on the EIA line chart come from secondary compilations of EIA data rather than a directly retrieved EIA table.
• Takeover cost ranges. No public valuation of PSE’s full electric system exists; the ranges on the public-power page extrapolate per-customer figures from Jefferson, Whatcom and Skagit.
• Executive-pay recovery. How much of PSE’s executive compensation is actually recovered in rates is not published; the ownership-page analysis shows the maximum possible effect if all of it were.
• Schedules and people. PSE has not published the megawatt figure for its Jan 2024 demand record; UTC open-meeting dates after Oct 29, 2026 were not yet posted; legislative committee chairs may change when the 2027 session organizes in January.

Corrections

Found an error or a newer number? Note the page, the figure and the source, and email David Geller <[email protected]>. Corrections are logged in the version notes.