(Image: CHS)

Day-long power outages from June-uary winds and rain that hit over 7,000 Seattle City Light customers in northern Capitol Hill earlier this month didn’t have enough of an impact for the city to consider installing underground power lines. The location of Capitol Hill power outages follows a pattern: in areas where multifamily housing development is less prevalent, power lines sit above ground and are left vulnerable to high winds and storms.

“The recent, sustained high wind event caused many outages throughout our service area including Capitol Hill,” Jenn Strang, media relations manager of SCL, told CHS.

Power outages are frequently caused by fallen trees, wind and ice. Strang said some instances are easier to fix than others, like the outage at 15th St and E Olive St.

“In the case of Monday’s outage at 15th Street East and East Olive, multiple wire spans and crossarms needed to be replaced and repaired which required different crews to complete the tasks,” Strang said.

Installing power lines underground to lessen the risk of outages in the area isn’t an option without larger scale housing development.

For one, it’s expensive — and the city wants developers to pay for it.

Nicholas Rich, client executive at IMEG—a national engineering and design consulting company— said many owners of newly built apartments want City Light to bury overhead power lines underground.

“If you put those underground you really improve the reliability in that respect locally,” Rich told CHS. “Usually a new developer won’t want to do that because City Light is perfectly happy keeping those overhead lines just the way they are.”

If a developer wants power lines underground, they have to pay for it themselves because City Light won’t, Rich said. An upside of burying power lines is the ability to sell more living units, since they aren’t an eyesore.

“Work to install or underground infrastructure is invasive, destructive, expensive, and typically takes years in planning and execution. In addition to the installation of new electrical equipment, these projects require mandated civil improvements such as new street panels, sidewalks, ramps…which must be carefully coordinated with city departments,” Strang said.

Rich said another compelling reason to bury power lines is city safety code that says power lines cannot be closer than 14 feet to any portion of the building: if power lines are buried, it prevent issues with the code.

The areas where the most recent power outages were centered and many of the most serious service disruptions have occurred in recent years represent some of the city’s least-developed blocks dominated by single family-style homes and some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Seattle.

The city’s latest growth plan, meanwhile, seems unlikely to change that with a proposal that would allow small multifamily development while mostly preserving the status quo in the city’s less-dense areas like North Capitol Hill, and near Volunteer Park and Stevens Elementary.

In Capitol Hill’s densest neighborhood’s the grid is mostly underground including heavy utility work in the city in areas like E Union.

Fifteen years ago in 2009, CHS reported on the start of the city’s most recent push to improve utilities in the quickly growing core of Capitol Hill with a $2 million project planned to move more of the Hill’s wiring underground, make the system better able to deliver service even when there are incidents when wiring is damaged and electricity needs to be re-routed, and make other improvements to strengthen reliability.

One of the most significant components of the upgrade was replacements of pockets of old wiring that were still serving Capitol Hill customers. The standard for electrical wire is 26,000 volt capacity. In 2009, parts of the Hill were still served by 4,000 volt wiring. We’d bet there are still a few strands of the old stuff out there in service.

City Light also installed areas of bigger poles and thicker lines to meet the electricity requirements for Capitol Hill Station. And in 2013, City Light finished replacing an overhead mainline near Capitol Hill in order to serve the hospitals and Seattle University.

Despite Capitol Hill’s development boom, City Light officials told CHS a decade ago the biggest challenge isn’t in meeting the demand for power but instead the complicated scheduling and manpower required to move electrical poles and lines to make way for new construction and provide hook-ups when construction crews need it. The boom has helped speed up the process of moving more lines underground as crews can take advantage of disconnecting components during new construction.

City Light moving a new transformer into place last year at the East Pine Substation (Image: Seattle City Light)

Today, Strang said SCL is in the process of developing a long-term plan that includes systemwide upgrades to Seattle’s underground infrastructure. Once the plan is approved and has secured resources for implementation, SCL will share timelines and locations with neighborhoods that will be impacted.

Until then, SCL is carrying on with upgrades to their East Pine Substation in the Central District, which provides power to the area and a couple of hospitals.  A goal of the project is to provide the lowest cost and most reliable power to SCL customers. The upgrade includes the expansion of two walls closer towards the facility’s property lines for future equipment upgrades, which will also have security improvements.

Strang said those at risk of losing power should keep an emergency bag packed with non-perishable food items, batteries, warm clothing and extra medications.

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