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March Windstorm Event

We understand how difficult it is to be without power, and we appreciate your patience. Crews continued to make steady progress overnight. Small pockets of customers remain without power in King County, Greenwater, and Skykomish. The plan for today is to continue to assess damage in difficult access areas and restore power as quickly and safely as possible.

Below are updates and current estimated restoration times for hard-hit areas:

  • In Skykomish, crews continue to work on the electric system that feeds the town from the west. An additional helicopter patrol is scheduled for later in the morning. We expect to have power restored to our Skykomish customers by today, March 15 at 8 p.m.
  • In King County, crews continue to repair damage to the system throughout the morning. We still expect most customers will have their power restored by today, March 15 at 8 p.m.
  • In Greenwater, Highway 410 remains closed and the combination of deep snow and many fallen trees is preventing crews and equipment from accessing damaged electric equipment. Based on current conditions, restoration efforts could go into Monday. Estimated times of restoration will be updated in the PSE outage map as we are able to reassess for any improvement to travel and access during today's early daylight.

Estimated restoration times by region are available at pse.com/alerts. As crews are assigned to a repair job, the specific time for that outage will be added to the outage map.

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Safety first. Never touch or go within 35 feet of downed power lines because they might be energized. Call PSE at 1-888-225-5773 or 911 to report problems.

Report and track power outages online

Puget Sound Energy transmission line and substation projects

Sedro #4, Phase A - Alger transmission line rebuild

2018 project updates

  • Construction is complete as of early 2018.

Project Overview

To increase electric reliability for customers in northwestern Skagit County, PSE will rebuild the existing transmission and distribution lines between Alger and Belfast. Currently, the local electric system is prone to power outages due to limited capacity and aging infrastructure. The existing poles and conductors were built in the early 1960s and need to be replaced. Rebuilding these transmission and distribution lines with new, higher capacity wire and replacing the poles will strengthen the current system and reduce the frequency of outages for our customers in the area.

As part of this project, PSE will:

  • Rebuild approximately 4 miles of an existing 115 kV transmission line by replacing the existing structures with new wood poles and new, higher capacity 115 kV conductors (wires).
  • Replace approximately 3 miles of existing single-phase distribution line with three-phase tree wire. Upgrading from single-phase to three-phase tree wire will increase both the capacity and the reliability of the system. Tree wire is a specially-coated wire that significantly reduces the frequency of tree-related outages.

In advance of construction, PSE will conduct vegetation management (brush clearing and tree trimming) throughout the existing corridor. This project is part of a larger set of improvements to be implemented over the next few years in the existing transmission line corridor.

Contact us

We welcome your questions and comments! Please contact:

Bob Parker
Project Manager
1-888-404-8773
MajorProjects@pse.com

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