Unlit

The "bomb cyclone" that formed near the Pacific Coast of the United States came by for a visit on Tuesday evening, and a good chunk of the region is still without power. And I'm not exactly sure why. According to Puget Sound Energy, the local power utility for the suburban area, the windstorm did a fair amount of damage to the high-tension transmission lines, and those needed to be repaired first. The current extent of the outages is unknown, because it turns out that the outage map isn't displaying things properly.

And this all speaks to my general gripe with PSE, which is that they tend to come off as unprepared for anything to go the least bit sideways. The storm that hit on Tuesday was described as a once-in-a-decade event. That shouldn't be enough to take down nearly the whole of the Seattle metropolitan area. Tree limbs falling on power lines is a regular enough occurrence that one would expect much more aggressive action to keep things clear, yet it's not unusual to see tree branches, or even whole damaged trees, effectively being supported by power lines. And the major power transmission lines through the region should be durable enough to stand up to high winds. Sure, this is not an area known for being windy. But there are times when it seems to me that any breeze strong enough to make for good kite-flying weather will result in the lights going out somewhere.

This is going to be a problem for the "Green Energy Transition." People are not going to want to give up alternatives if the electricity isn't reliable. One of the initiatives on the November ballot was about preventing the state from prohibiting gas-burning appliances in new homes, and stopping state-mandated electrification. It lost (possibly because it seemed like pretty obvious shilling for the natural gas industry), but I suspect that if Tuesday's storm had arrived a month ago, the outcome may have been different. It's one thing for the lights to be out, but the furnace, stove and hot-water heater to be working. It's quite another to be without any sort of appliances. Even as it is, I suspect that homes with gas appliances and heating will be more valuable than some people would like, and generators are going to be popular items for a while.

And the public has a role to play in all of this, as well. There's going to need to be pressure on the utility companies to prioritize resilience of their infrastructure. Otherwise, it will be something that's sold to the public at a profit, for the benefit of investors, and that expense will slow the process. And the area will go dark the next time that Mother Nature tosses a curveball our way.