During September, Queen Anne residents experienced planned and unplanned power outages. On Tuesday evening, Oct. 13, Seattle City Light held a public meeting addressing these outages in Seattle Center's Rainier Room. The meeting's goal was to explain what went wrong and what the city is doing to fix the problems. About 15 community members attended.
The problems in the electrical lines are caused by infrastructure that is up to 40 years old, according to Bernie Ziemianek, director of Energy Delivery Operations. The energy crisis that hit in 2000 and 2001 is partially to blame for this, he said.
As a result, the utility was forced to dramatically "cut back on the planned maintenance and replacement of some of that infrastructure," added Jorge Carrasco, superintendent of Seattle City Light, adding that "we're beginning to now witness the effects of that." Seattle City Light is in the process of replacing the old lines, which was part of the cause of outages.
The process includes replacing transformers, and that was City Light's intention on Sept. 10 when work began on the cable lines for Queen Anne. The first problem was that a connection between cable wires had failed, creating "the first significant hole in the system," Ziemianek said. City Light scheduled time to fix this problem on Sept. 26. The problem was repaired during the time scheduled, but there wasn't time to test the new connection before the planned outage was over.
Ziemianek explained that "putting customers back in service is our prime responsibility and goal." Therefore they decided to keep that circuit out of service until they were able to schedule another planned outage. The wires running to that circuit were put on alternate circuits.
The second mishap occurred when one of the circuits that was taking on extra lines temporarily failed, causing 11,795 customers to lose power, according to Ziemianek. This problem is scheduled to be fixed Oct. 26 with a planned outage occurring between midnight and 7 a.m.
Additionally, City Light plans to replace 1,100 feet of cable, starting in about a week or two, according to Ziemianek, who added that the anticipated completion date is at the end of December. The cost of this cable replacement is around $500,000.
Carrasco continued to stress that as a result of the old system, the city is forced to put more investment in infrastructure. About $2.6 million in improvements are scheduled to affect Queen Anne's cable lines between now and 2011, he added. The trend over time has been that the number of outages is going up, while the reliability of the cable system is going down.
Any property damages incurred due to a power outage may be reported to Seattle City Light through a claims form. For further information contact Seattle City Light at 206-684-3000.[[In-content Ad]]
