One of the great frustrations of being a meteorologist is to see a major event nearly perfectly forecast, yet with massive impacts on society.
It is frustrating to be concerned about global warming and seeing our region unable to keep the lights on for over a million people, some for 2-5 days. Without reliability, a transition away from fossil fuels cannot be made.
I have blogged several times about the major easterly wind event on November 19, which resulted in over a half-million homes losing power. This event was nearly perfectly forecast several days ahead.....so there is not much more my discipline can do.
Brave, resilient individuals who restored power, some working for 12-36 h without rest, are the heroes of this story.
The villains? Perhaps utility companies that were complacent about clearing trees and branches from the powerlines. Utilities that did not invest in underground wiring when needed.
Let me show you some examples...and you be the judge.
Large areas in Seattle were out of power for 3-5 days, resulting in spoiled food, folks forced out of their homes by cold, and closed businesses.
For example, major Seattle City Light powerlines in northwest Seattle along Sand Point Way NE (between NE 70th and NE 95th) frequently fail because of the lack of trimming of branches that extend above the powerlines. Multiple branch failures on these lines blacked out northern Magnuson Park, Inverness, Inverness Park, Sand Point Country Club, and Mathews Beach on November 19, affecting thousands of Seattle residents.
Even today, there are large sections of Sand Point Way NE where branches extend over the powerlines (see below)....the next power outage is ready to go!
Vegetation management outside of Seattle, mainly in areas for which Puget Sound Energy is responsible, is even worse. A few of thousands of examples are shown below
If this region is really serious about moving to a dependency on electricity, the power grid needs to be much more reliable. Either bury power cables or initiate a massive program of tree trimming and removal. Meteorologists are doing our part... utilities must do theirs.
Funny how our state can spend billions on culverts to protect salmon populations that are fundamentally incompatible with urbanization, but they have no interest in a project to bury critical power infrastructure away from the trees.
ReplyDeleteWe live in an incredibly fertile area where, left to their own devices, plants will crowd every available aerial space in their quest for sunlight. We have to acknowledge this reality with our utility infrastructure, just as California takes into account earthquakes and wildfire, Florida takes into account hurricanes and lightning, etc.
tell that to the tribes Salmon spending is a legal requirement
DeleteWe could spend the entire state budget on nothing but salmon restoration, but the results would still disappoint. Salmon thrive only where people are sparse, no matter how many billions we spend or what any court rules.
DeleteThat is incorrect. The Willamette River flowing through Portland now has healthy runs of spring Chinook. And some of the worst damage occurs in rural areas: logging, road building, gravel mining, dams.
DeleteI've provided protection for trimming crews. Folks in neighborhoods actually threaten them when making needed cuts. Sad.
ReplyDeleteHow much tree trimming would the suburban populace be ok with? A lot of the residents live there because the area is forested; removal of all trees around the power lines would make them feel like they lived in an urban area, which they don’t want.
DeleteBurying power lines after the area has been constructed is phenomenally expensive. Each of these neighborhoods were constructed as an exurban community, but with infill they became suburban.
The low density of these areas coupled with the in-place substandard infrastructure would make it prohibitively expensive to bury power. I doubt the residents would be willing to pay for it. With battery technology, it may actually be less expensive to add battery backups to each home.
The only partial solution I see would be ring type power delivery, where one break of a line wouldn’t take out all downstream customers. This is what Vashon allowed and it increased their reliability. They had to ok more lines to create the ring, but it helped them weather the storms.
There is no free lunch.
They are unclear on what they own. In most cases they don't own the land over which the lines run, and in the cases they do, there is an easement granted with the original title permitting the trimming to maintain the line for the benefit of all electricity users. We all need understand what we do and do not own and do and do not have the right to demand, and to obey the laws when it comes to such things, not just when it's convenient for us.
DeleteThe state utility regulators and PUDs also have much responsibility for the failures we regularly experience.
20 years ago when I served on the Technology, Energy, and Communications committee in the state House of Representatives, we inquired about undergrounding of power lines in response to recurring outages in the area between Woodinville and Duvall. All we found were roadblocks, mostly related to cost, including the cost of buying land to provide the relatively wide swath needed to have the minimum safe distance between the lines and adjacent buildings and underground utility lines, plus the costs of the underground cabling itself. And who pays that? Is it fair for neighborhoods that already have utilities underground which they paid for included in the price of their homes, to now pay for undergrounding for others? The policy today is that the customers in the area served by the lines being undergrounded pay for it rather than the entire rate base of the utility, but the expense is very high. It's relatively easy to underground utilities when a subdivision is first being developed, but much harder to retrofit it later. And thus it is quite rare for that to be done.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you have said here, Professor Mass. If this region is going to be mostly or even wholly dependent on electricity, which does seem to be the direction we are heading in, the power grid is going to have to be made considerably more reliable. Where I'm at on the coast, tree trimming is done on a four year cycle via our local PUD. When I lived in the Seattle area, tree trimming was done on a seven year cycle via PSE. While we do have outages here on the coast from time-to-time, the more frequent tree trimmimg does seem to help to keep them in check. That, and having a local PUD only having to serve one county versus PSE, which is trying to serve multiple counties. Could part of the solution be to break up PSE into several different PUDs? During the November 19th windstorm, everyone where I'm at had their power back on within a day and a half, and that includes some very rural and difficult to reach areas near Olympic National Forest. The PSE outage map was still lit up in red for several days afterward.
ReplyDeleteI used to work for Puget Power (remember them?). One thing I recall learning was that burying power lines sounds like a great idea, but it comes with its own problems. The power may go out less often than with overhead lines, but when it does it's more expensive and takes longer to restore.
ReplyDeleteSo it's a choice.. more outages that are quick and cheap to restore, or less outages that take longer to restore and cost more. This is an unavoidable problem with our 19th century distributed power system design, which is what we will have for at minimum another 500 years.
PSE spent a lot of time trimming over the summer on Bainbridge - damage could have been a lot worse.
ReplyDeleteI remember the storm of 1990, first the rain, then the snow, wind that blew in from the north if I recall, then the deep freeze, causing all the animals that were stranded from the floods up north in places like Fir Island, now frozen to death in the frozen water.
DeleteWent with my Dad to rescue my middle sister and her 2 kids and animals from an uninsulated all electric guest cabin at a place she was house sitting as there was no heat due to the mass of trees and branches that fell, knocking out power after the snow.
It took us about 2 hours from Tacoma to Bainbridge Island via Hwy 16 to get to her, and then navigate the roads that were littered with branches to rescue them.
“ Perhaps utility companies that were complacent about clearing trees and branches from the powerlines. Utilities that did not invest in underground wiring when needed.”
ReplyDeleteCliff, as a former utility guy, there are few things people in the PNW hate more than someone telling them they have to cut their trees. It doesn’t matter if they decided ten years ago to plant a redwood tree under power lines, who are you to tell them what to do?!? [real example]
When the lines in question are 115kV or above, federal standards require trimming (FERC/NERC/WECC). For distribution lines, it’s up to the local utility. With the range of problems we have in the industry, fighting against the lovely residents of what is affectionately known inside Seattle City Light as “Lake Forest Dark” to get them to support tree trimming is an uphill, and often political battle from which no winners emerge.
Similarly, undergrounding power lines is a good solution (though they do have longer outage periods when broken, typically by a construction backhoe whose driver may survive), but no one wants to pay for it. 3-10x cost that is typically assessed directly from the community requesting it, and not socialized across all customers.
On the bright side, its vastly easier to recover from an October windstorm that brings down every loose or unstable tree so that when the one week winter storm hits us, there is much less damage; and therefore less work to do under even more challenging conditions.
And in terms of emergency work schedules, most utilities in the NW use 12 hour “operational periods” pursuant to ICS/NIMS emergency mgmt. They really try to make sure line crews have “12 on/12 off” to avoid fatigue-driven accidents. It’s all documented in the respective IBEW CBAs. That’s the plan anyway… Happy Holidays.
I get people hate cutting trees, but in reality isn't it in the Power Company's right of way so it doesn't matter right...they can complain all they want, but can't do anything right. I know when I had close neighbors I cut all the limbs off that were on my side, they couldn't do anything about it. Also, our local PUD sent a crew over to help, with the great forecast perhaps they could get crews over before hand and have them at ready to restore power, travel and organization takes time and they could of been preemptive that end.
DeleteYour point is well taken Cliff. The scale of the vegetation management issue in western Washington is massive and is tantamount to gross negligence on behalf of the utilities. An honest rebuttal to this post by utility executives would be informative.
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ReplyDeleteWhile driving around Issaquah after the windstorm I was surprised how localized the tree damage was. Some areas were a mess with hundreds of trees knocked down, while a few blocks away there was no obvious damage. One thing meteorologists could do to help out with prioritizing vegetation cutbacks would be to create more detailed maps of where the highest winds will be. I'm thinking something equivalent to flood zones. We could call them "wind zones."
I actually don't mind if the power is out for a couple days once in a while. (Though it is a bit hard on my tropical fish.) It is a nice change of pace. I have a fireplace, lanterns, candles, and camp stoves. As it turns out, though, it rarely happens in my neighborhood because the lines ARE underground.
ReplyDeleteI feel the same way, and I have a propane fireplace in the master bedroom that's optimized for producing heat without any electricity, and a wood-burning fireplace for the middle of the house along with a couple of cords of firewood, and a 3kw portable generator running on bottled propane if I need it. Haven't had to use it yet in a real outage. (We didn't lose power during the big outage. But someday...) Nice thing about propane is that it stores indefinitely to be used only when the power's out. And we have underground power distribution in our area of OlyPen.
DeleteOne has to think about secondary and tertiary heating in a mostly-electric future. The utility distribution system is clearly not designed to survive big windstorms, and likely won't be in any foreseeable future. Everyone needs to be prepared given even a moderate quake will take it out much longer than any wind.
As a native of this area (born and raised), I see a lot of tree hugging going on, regardless of reality. That is, many folks fail to realize/understand that to have trees, means taking care of them, trimming them as needed, especially around/near power lines, and yet, fail to understand when a tree in their yard takes down lines, like the service line TO their house, let alone the lines between poles supplying us all power.
ReplyDeleteI also am aware of how fragile our power system is, and its likely incapability of continuously power our lives with AC, electric ranges, heat etc, yet, this state and many others are pushing us all to go all electric, as its THE answer to everything, when clearly it's not.
I'm so glad we repealed the ban on gas, thus continue to have options for power sources other than electricity. I want to be able to cook with gas, and drive ICE cars as they are much less expensive than an EV for the same type of vehicle. it's tough being poor/low paid when everyone pushes more expensive solutions onto folks without any regards to financial capability.
cliff - we didn't get much wind over here on Vashon. Is that typical? Wind didn't want to blow across the water? Was the pressure differential limited to the Seattle side? -Pen
ReplyDeleteThere was a substantial difference in Snohomish County. There absolutely were outages, many of them, but they were generally shorter. PUD and Snohomish County Public Works have been great about tree clearance recently, and it shows. I live 3 miles North of Monroe. I lost power at 8 p.m. and it was back on at midnight - during the storm. I am thankful for SnoPUD!
ReplyDeleteLiving in Portland over the past decade plus, I'm also frustrated at the complete inability to prevent long lasting power outages, particularly during wind and ice storms. This region is known for these events, yet every freaking time the officials in charge act incredulous and surprised when they occur. Why does the state of Florida deal with catastrophic hurricanes seemingly every year, yet despite widespread devastation gets the power back on in record time? This comes down to effective management and correct usage of public resources. To wit, the recent hurricane in FL caused incredible damage to infrastructure, yet the Governor has thousands of subcontracted work crews at the ready, waiting just outside of the hurricane's destructive path. He's done this many times by now, so why do our states not effectively copy this example?
ReplyDeleteJefferson PUD has buried some feeders and MPR Port Ludlow customers have mostly buried lines, but it is an ongoing effort. Also, lots of tree trimming along the county roads to improve reliability. We are among the beneficiaries
ReplyDeleteCliff, back in May you wrote, "Climate models suggest that global warming would weaken the easterly winds, particularly during the late summer and winter, thus reducing the potential for wildfire." (In the comment section of your May 23, 2024, post on wildfires). Do you still believe that is true? And if so, might it be a disincentive for utilities to take the actions you recommend?
ReplyDeleteCity of Issaquah has been proactive trimming trees but this storm took down a lot of trees that were so big they were well clear of the lines but still took them down. It would be impossible to take down every tree that could potentially hit a line in Issaquah. Another area to look at is protection of transformers from overloads so they don't blow. Current protections are clearly inadequate and fixing blown units must be a tedious and expensive thing to do.
ReplyDeleteOn an unrelated subject: Your opinion on GenCast an AI based forecasting system that is purported to be better than the European model.
I remember years ago when Lewis County PUD finally overcame political opposition and started an ongoing project of trimming trees. Subsequently, after ice/wind storms our local crews would have some lines go down, but nothing wholesale. Our crews got to travel to other districts and reap the well-earned overtime pay to help them recover.
ReplyDeleteAs a former resident living in Lakewood, just south of Tacoma, my partner and I experienced a serious multi-day outage where we were serviced by PSE. We endured sub 20 degree temps with thousands of dollars in plumbing repairs underneath the house afterwords.
ReplyDeleteWhat made this even more aggravating was we were a mere 12 blocks away from a locally managed, that maintained their overhead lines. Proper overhead line maintenance IS possible - you just need to do it more than once a decade......
I work for Puget Sound Energy. Let me speak to a couple points you raised.
ReplyDelete1) Underground lines. To retroactively move lines underground is extremely costly and a lot of the soil around here is too soft for the lines to be protected.
2) PSE hires asplundh to do tree trimming every spring and summer however sometimes we can’t touch a tree because we don’t have the right-a-way to do so.
I understand how difficult this recent power outage was for folks as I experienced on with SNOPud in the winter of 2022-2023 when a strong north wind came into Everett. The biggest issue is the folks that live outside of cities experience days long power outages every winter but us city folk never really deal with on longer than a day and we aren’t prepared. I hope this helps a little.
Thank you for your blog it helps this weather nerd learn what going on. :-)
MacQ..... I can understand about the expense of undergrounding powerlines. Perhaps that is something that the immense amount of funds provided by the state carbon tax (CCA) could help provide. Regarding trimming...certainly there are large areas (such as the one I noted on Seattle's Sand Point Way NE,)where the city DOES have access but has not been responsible in trimming. Let's get those done...cliff
DeleteAny thoughts on the potential wind event Saturday
ReplyDeleteA few years ago, PSE's contract was coming up for renewal covering the Kenmore area. Kenmore City Council engaged some external consultants that are specialists in the area to look at PSE's performance, particularly given the persistent power difficulties on the circuit that covers Finn Hill area (https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/kenmore-neighborhood-first-to-lose-power-last-to-get-it-back-on/281-335151615)
ReplyDeleteTheir report showed a few things, but notably:
1) PSE Failed to carry out annual inspections of lines and clearance of foliage.
2) PSE manages to restore power faster than typical (great linesmen!).
As a consequence of the report, and with the contract on the line, PSE went through and did a big inspection and cut back of foliage and power suddenly became incredibly reliable for the next ~18 months. From outages 1-2+ times a quarter to none.
Of course, once the contract was renewed, they stopped.
That sounds like a failure to negotiate a contract with effective, ongoing (dis)incentives to perform. For example, negotiating targets for the number/duration of outages annually; and then setting penalties for underperformance (with bonuses for stellar performance).
DeleteFailing to do this shows a real lack of foresight. What's worse, it ignores the realities of human nature: without accountability, people will revert to the same short-term, profit-maximizing nonsense that the city was looking to prevent.
Tl;dr: As Reagan said to Gorbachev what feels like a zillion years ago: Trust, but verify.