Roosiehood's post on the outage of January 24th (click the picture to redirect and read)
Our next door neighbor blog, Roosiehood, reported on last week’s power outage that affected around 840 Seattle City Light customers. (Ravenna Blog HQ wasn’t affected, just AFK.)
The good news is Seattle City Light crews know exactly where the problem occurred and were able to restore power within the hour.
The unfortunate news is they did not find a cause.
We talked with Scott Thomsen, Seattle City Light’s Communications and Public Affairs guy, about where the problem occurred, and he gave us a little Electric Grid 101 as a bonus.
From power generation sources (hydroelectric dams, for example), power flows to substations, then through feeder lines to lateral lines and then to places of service (stores, schools, your house, etc.).
In the case of the January 24 outage, power from the University Substation was heading to customers via an underground feeder, like usual. A breaker on this feeder line tripped, and around 840 customers were put in the dark. (This particular feeder serves around 3,500 customers, so things could have been worse).
In the event of another outage, we’d be happy to call up Scott again. But we hope we don’t have to. (No offense, Scott.)
My goodness that’s a beautiful screen shot.
Isn’t it? Makes one really appreciate your newest masthead. What is that, your fifteenth? Well done.
Okay, that was kinda snarky. But I do like it.