The Power of Lakeview Light and Power
Your first impression of John is that if a utility pole snapped in half, he could just hold up the power lines himself until a replacement pole came around. John is 6’4” and just seems to get bigger from the ground up. Every time I shake his hand, my hand disappears and I can only hope that I can have it back.
John DeVore is the General Manager of Lakeview Light & Power.
John started at Weyerhaeuser until they relocated from the heartbreakingly beautiful campus in Federal Way to downtown Seattle.
“This opportunity opened up, I applied for it, and, long story short, I was selected by the Board of Directors and started work here July 29, 2016.”
“Lakeview is the area of the county where Lakeview Light & Power first got its roots. So the first customers were right in the outskirts, kind of in the dairy areas.
“Regarding our fuel mix we have approximately 80% of our fuel mixes hydro, about 11% is nuclear, and then the balance 9 to 10% is renewable through market purchases, which may be from a green resource, like wind, solar, hydro, bio. But they don't carry the tag with it, so it's called ‘Unspecified’. We can't call it ‘green energy’ or ‘non-carbon emitting energy’, because there's no tag with it to tell you where it was generated.
The very last tab on Lakeview Light & Power’s website lists the state requirements to collect and provide energy. John and company don’t even flinch.
“We're at a very interesting intersection in the utility industry right now. State policy is becoming highly involved in the utility industry... as far as how we manage low income energy, how do we manage carbon-emitting resources, how do we manage wildfire mitigation, how do we manage a transmission deficiency in our state to get the generation resources. So our state wants to focus a lot of the new energy, energy in solar and wind. Those resources are best equipped to be built on the east side of the mountains, but you have to have transmission to get it from source to its market, which is the population centers are on the west side of mountains, and we have a transmission bottleneck right now.
“It's a number of things. The current transmission infrastructure doesn't have the capacity. It's completely used up. Number two, you have constraints geographically speaking, with a mountain system that you have to cross over, as well as federal and state lands that you have to negotiate leases easements through. And then you have the “NIMBYs”, the ‘Not In My Back Yard’ people that don't want the ugly infrastructure in their backyards. And then the tribes are becoming a big player in this too, because they own a lot of land that interconnects from east to west, and so at some point you have to bring transmission through their tribal reservations to get to market.”
Lakeview Light & Power offers numerous programs from energy assistance, scholarships, credits, rebates, even Google Nest thermostats (all conditional).
In an unexpected development, the service charge is dropping for most commercial accounts as of June 2026.
Not bad for being over 100 years old. And only 28 members in the company family. With John’s meaty hand at the helm.