PSE: Port Madison line was out of commission during Sunday’s blackout

Published 12:29 pm Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Puget Sound Energy acknowledged Tuesday that it wasn’t just a fallen tree that prompted the last power outage on Bainbridge Island.

The island has been beset with blackouts this summer, and Ray Lane, PSE’s media engagement guru, said as much in an email to local media this week.

“We understand it has been a frustrating late summer for our customers on Bainbridge: There have been four major outages that have impacted the island at different points. Each time, a power issue has left our more than 12,000 customers there wondering what’s going on,” he wrote.

“First off, we apologize for the inconvenience. We understand it’s a pain when the power goes out,” Lane added. “We make every effort to get it restored as safely and quickly as possible, but it can be aggravating for those waiting at home or at their business as we work on restoration efforts.”

While the most recent event on the morning of Sunday, Sept. 27 — an outage that reportedly left 14,000 without electricity — was caused by a red alder that toppled onto the Foss Corner-Port Madison transmission line on Miller Road, Lane said the transmission line was one of two that feed power to the island, and the Port Madison transmission line would have normally provided backup power to Bainbridge.

“But, in a stroke of unfortunate timing, work was still being done on that very line to upgrade the system, and the line was not energized,” Lane said.

The previous outage, on Sunday, Sept. 20, was caused when a branch broke off a “very tall” Douglas fir and fell into one of the lines across Agate Passage that feeds power to the entire island.

Lane also said the Winslow substation has gone offline twice since mid-August due to brittle, dried out trees hitting transmission lines.

The hot weather and drought conditions have left trees stressed, Lane noted, and it was something seen across Western Washington during the late August windstorm.