“Why is my alarm clock blinking?” – Power outage affects 3,600 in Ravenna/Wedgwood this afternoon

About 3,600 Seattle City Light customers lost power this afternoon around 1 PM, due to a falling tree branch. Power was restored about an hour later.

From Seattle City Light’s Scott Thomsen (emphasis mine):

Seattle City Light restored service to about 3,600 homes and businesses in Ravenna and Wedgwood in about an hour after a falling tree branch cut power to the area.

The outage started about 1 p.m. when a private tree company cut down part of a Douglas fir near NE 40th Avenue and NE 92nd Street. The falling wood hit power lines, causing a short, before coming off the lines and falling to the ground.

City Light crews inspected the area for damage then re-set breakers to restore power before 2 p.m.

The general boundaries of the outage were NE 106th Street on the north, NE 75th Street on the south, 8th Avenue NE on the west and Lake Washington on the east.

At the time of this writing it looks as though there is one customer still affected, very close by where the incident took place. But all other customers in the area have restored power.

This is also a friendly reminder (for those in the effected area) to check your clocks (especially any that may wake you up in the morning) when you get home from work today.

Power outage affecting over 2,000 customers in Ravenna and U District

UPDATE (as I was writing): From the Seattle City Light’s Power Lines information page:

City Light crews have restored power to all but 837 customers in the University District area, in an outage that originally affected more than 2,000 customers. The outage began at about 6 p.m., and was caused by a downed wire.

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Seattle City Light (and a few Ravenna Blog twitter feed followers) have reported a large power outage affecting areas of Ravenna and the University District, starting around 6PM this evening.

Seattle City Light Outage Map screen shot taken during the outage on April 1

Seattle City Light has crews working to restore power at this time (though no estimated time of restoration has been given).

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This area is no stranger to outages: I reported on a similarly-shaped outage which occurred on January 24th of this year. I mention this not because I’m looking for a connection (or a conspiracy), just to note that local residents are quite tired of these things.

More info on area power outage on January 24

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.)

Continuing power outage in Wedgwood (restored)

UPDATE (8:45 am): We have confirmation from a Wedgwood Power Outage sibling that some power was restored around 11:30pm that night.

UPDATE (6:41 am): Looks as though power has been restored to customers throughout the affected area at some point after after my last update (Seattle City Light System Status page now shows zero outages).

UPDATE (12:40 am): Power has been partially restored to the affected area. Seattle City Light System Status page now showing only 2 outages affecting 241 customers.

At approximately 2:30 pm on Wednesday afternoon, a Ravenna Blog twitter feed follower up in the Wedgwood/Matthews Beach/Meadowbrook area had her lights flicker and die, only to come on about a half an hour later.

But some of her neighbors were not so lucky.

Nearly 400 customers are still without power in an area of Wedgwood bordered by 30th Avenue NE, NE 90th St, 45th Ave NE and NE 82nd St (information from Seattle City Light’s System Status page; see the graphic below for greater detail).

Power-outage affected area as of 11:20 pm on Wednesday, October 27

Specially tagged areas of the map at the source give an estimated number of affected customers, an estimated power restoration time, and a cause (though not specific). This Seattle City Light’s System Status page is updated every 15 minutes.

For this current outage, two of the three tags have lapsed restoration times listed.  All three have “Equip fail” listed as causes.

Another way to access outage information (and to report an outage) is to call Seattle City Light at (206) 684-7400.  However, you need a phone number within the affected area to hear or report outage information for that area.

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Unfortunately, that is all the information on this outage that I can find at this time. I’m left to publish an update in the morning.