Seattle City Light is proud to share the news that the first Humbolt penguin chick at Woodland Park Zoo has hatched. Seattle City Light is proud to share the news that the first Humbolt penguin chick at Woodland Park Zoo has hatched.
You can learn more about the new chick from the zoo here.
Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities helped Woodland Park Zoo build the penguins’ exhibit with many sustainability features.
Humbolt penguins at Woodland Park Zoo
City Light paid for an energy efficient ground-based geothermal heat pump that uses the Earth’s below-ground temperature to keep the exhibit’s water at a penguin-friendly 55 degrees year round. Seattle Public Utilities paid to install an innovative water filtration system.
Those features will save nearly 22,000 kilowatt-hours of energy and 3 million gallons of water per year. That’s the equivalent of heating five, new two-bedroom townhouses and saving 24 million pints of drinking water each year.
The exhibit is also designed to contain and recycle all stormwater runoff thereby preventing the pollution of natural water sources like Puget Sound.
The exhibit earned a design excellence award from the Seattle Design Commission in December.