Seattle City Councilmember Bruce Harrell

Inspection process helps ensure our streetlight system is safe

This past Thanksgiving Sammy the German Shorthair Pointer was killed by contact voltage from faulty wiring in a metal poled streetlight on Queen Anne Hill. The streetlight was installed by a private contractor and inspected by the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), pursuant to established policy.

I, like many others were appalled by this death. A close pet is like a family member and my heart goes out to Sammy’s family.

To decrease the possibility of this happening again, Seattle City Light took control by inspecting more than 37,000 pieces of equipment, including nearly 16,000 metal streetlight poles. Our streetlight system has approximately 80,000 streetlight poles. One reason for using metal poles is that they last longer and uphold their appearance longer. When contact voltage was discovered, crews immediately cut power to the units and inspected them further to determine and fix the problem.

On February 16, 2010, City Light reported to the Energy, Technology and Civil Rights Committee to discuss the inspection results. Industry standards allow a testing level of 50 volts. As an extra precaution City Light decreased the testing level to 30 volts. Crews found 56 pieces of equipment with readings above 30 volts. These were de-energized and are being repaired. Crews found 102 pieces of equipment with readings less than 30 volts. All will be repaired within the next 3 months.

Our new pole inspection policy will produce results that exceed national standards. This will help ensure greater safety to our streetlight system. I commend the leadership at City Light for taking ownership to inspect and identify all of the problem poles. Moreover, our policy changes are smart changes.

Press Release: January 12, 2011

Council action reaffirms utility’s financial ratings

Seattle – The Seattle City Council today approved a utility bond refinance and an issuance of new bonds that saved Seattle City Light and its customers $10 million.

“Last year we created the $100 million Rate Stabilization Account and developed a strategy to change our financial policies to protect customers from unreasonable rate increases caused by wholesale revenue shortfalls,” said Councilmember Bruce Harrell. “Savings from this bond sale will help keep rates low.”

City Light’s rate of 6.88 cents per kilowatt hour is the lowest in the country among the top 25 cities. The national average is 9.89 cents. San Francisco’s rate is 13.47 cents and Los Angeles’ is 11.80 cents. When adjusted for inflation, City Light’s rates are lower than they were in 2004.

An element of this action is the Clean Renewable Energy Bond where City Light will receive subsidies from the Federal Government for expenses related to renewable energy.

Last year, City Council’s approval of a bond sale resulted in $57 million in savings and set the stage for City Light’s favorable bond ratings of AA- (Standard & Poor’s) and Aa2 (Moody’s) which allows City Light to borrow at a lower interest rate. This year’s bond sale reaffirms the strength and competitiveness of the utility and its commitment to its customers.

Seattle residents and businesses demand low, competitive rates. A 2010 Seattle Times Op Ed piece demanded that Seattle City Light not increase rates and drive its costs down by operational efficiencies and live within its means. My committee, the Energy, Technology and Civil Rights Committee, heard those concerns and based on those demands, here are some facts: Our current rates are 15% lower than they were in 2004, when adjusted for inflation. In 1990, the rate was 5.88 cents per kilowatt hour. The current rate is 6.88 cents per kilowatt hour. The national average rate is 9.89. Denver is 7.93; San Francisco is 13.47 and New York is 21.46. Of the 25 largest cities, we are the lowest. How?

The City Council cut City Light’s Operations & Maintenance (O&M) and Capital spending by $94 million in 2009 and $64 million in 2010. We eliminated 49 positions in 2010. You have asked that City Light live within its means. Fact: The number of authorized Full Time Employees (FTE’s) in 2010 is merely 2% higher than in 2000 (41 employees more) and the largest group of new positions are in the Conservation areas where we are required under state law to comply with the conservation targets set forth in I-937.

As part of last year’s budget, we directed City Light to limit their distribution services overtime expenditure to $3,000,000. Authorization to exceed this limit would not be granted until the Utility provided the Council with a written explanation of future overtime management. City Light responded by limiting mandatory safety meetings to 1 hour, eliminating non-essential group meetings and decreasing setup and breakdown time on the loading dock. The results: 18% reduction in overtime compared with 2008 and a 21% reduction from 2007. In terms of dollars, overtime expenditures decreased from nearly $25 million in 2006 to just over $10 million in 2009. We will continue to monitor and improve these numbers.

For the first time in City Light’s history, we have achieved a $100 million dollar rainy day fund to protect rate payers from the volatility of the wholesale market where we trade energy. We accomplished this by refinancing approximately $580 million in bonds and saved $57 million and rather than merge the projected savings with O&M and capital, we required the utility to fund the Rate Stabilization Account. Moreover, the 4.5% surcharge which was partially used to build the Rate Stabilization Account (RSA) will be retired in January 2011 and was in place less than a year.

It is important however, to understand the challenges we face. Fact: there are 80,000 utility poles in the distribution system, with an average life of 50 years. Nearly 50% of the poles are near the end of their useful life. We approved $4 million in the 2011 budget to help ensure the poles are replaced before they fail.

Substation transformers face a similar scenario. The average life of a transformer is 40 years. The average age of City Light’s transformers are 34 years, with some being far older. We approved $1.3 million for maintenance and replacement. City Light’s distribution system has about 500 miles of underground cable with an average life of about 35 years. Most of the system is already 35 years old. We are using new technology to inject the cables with a gel substance that extends their life which is less than digging them up and replacing them. We approved $5.6 million to keep the cable injection program on track. City Light has approximately 400,000 electricity meters. 40% are at least 30 years old. These units run slower as they age and do not record electricity use accurately. These are examples of its aging infrastructure.

It should be clear that City Light is on the right track and that we are always looking for methods to improve efficiencies. We have put in place tremendous volunteer talent in our City Light Review Panel to help drive a new Strategic Plan. The Strategic Plan is a fluid six-year document that will provide investment choices and strategies to help guide our decisions as we consider funding for large infrastructure items like a Smart Grid. One goal of the Strategic Plan is to completely align the rate setting process with the budget process. This will make the rate impact of these projects clear and give us the ability to prioritize them based on need and impact.

Bottom line: We hear you and will do everything possible to maintain a competitive edge in the rates on our electricity.

Streetlight maintenance is a core service of Seattle City Light. Many cities throughout the country have prioritized the value of proper lighting in their neighborhoods and streets. You have asked me to fix the problem.

Therefore, we changed replacement strategies and are now using new lighting technology. By doing so, the Utility has answered my call for optimizing customer service. Trouble tickets for burned out streetlights continues to decrease. For example, there are currently only 33 trouble tickets for streetlights that need engineering work. In 2008, there were over 1,800 such tickets in the system. These are situations where the repair is much more than simply changing the bulb and parts need to be ordered or crews need to be scheduled.

There is more! We have elected to implement night time streetlight patrols to gather information on burned out arterial streetlights. This work will be done without the use of overtime on a graveyard shift from 11:00 pm -7:00 am. We started a 30-day trial on November 1st.

Arterial streetlights are difficult for the public to report because traffic moves at a higher rate of speed on arterials and drivers are less apt to stop and get the required information to report the streetlight. There are about 500 miles of arterial roadway in Seattle proper and 120 miles of arterial roadway outside of Seattle in cities served by City Light. There are approximately 32,000 streetlights on these arterial streets.

These are examples of City Light answering the call to improve streetlight maintenance, improve customer service and use new, efficient technologies.

Photo credit: flickr/citywalker

Proclamation issued at Full Council on November 8, 2010

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WHEREAS, The City of Seattle has led the nation in energy conservation programs since the 1970s, saving more than 13.3 BILLION kilowatt hours of power – enough to light one and a half cities the size of Seattle for a year; and

WHEREAS, Seattle City Light began its Twist & Save compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) campaign in June 2007 with three participating retailers to encourage consumers to use energy efficient CFLs; and

WHEREAS, The average ENERGY STAR CFL is designed to last an average of 8,000 hours or approximately seven years in a typical household; and

WHEREAS, If every American household replaced just one incandescent light with an ENERGY STAR CFL, enough energy would be saved to light three million homes for a year, saving $600 million in energy costs, and preventing nine billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year – equivalent to taking
800,000 cars off the road; and

WHEREAS, The average Seattle home has about 33 light bulb sockets, and the average CFL installed in a Seattle home saves about $4.50 per year in electricity costs – or, on average, as much as $150 in energy savings could be realized; and

WHEREAS, Today there are nineteen participating retailers with 66 locations where consumers can purchase discounted energy-saving ENERGY STAR CFLs; and

WHEREAS, CFLs can be recycled at several locations and Seattle City Light will continue its partnership with retailers and manufacturers to educate customers about proper CFL recycling at retail drop-off locations; and

WHEREAS, Seattle citizens have once again demonstrated their energy saving leadership by purchasing THREE MILLION Compact Fluorescent light bulbs since 2007, equating to energy savings that would power more than 54,000 homes for an entire year,

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT PROCLAIMED BY THE MAYOR AND SEATTLE CITY COUNCIL THAT THE WEEK BEGINNING NOVEMBER 7th AND ENDING NOVEMBER 13th, 2010, SHALL BE CELEBRATED AS

TWIST & SAVE WEEK

Press Release: Nov. 4, 2010

Seattle City Light is better prepared to respond to winter storms this year thanks to a new outage management system that enhances coordination of service restoration efforts and the utility’s ability to share information about that work with customers.

“The Hanukkah Eve storm of 2006 demonstrated that we needed to modernize the tools and systems we use to respond to power outages,” Superintendent Jorge Carrasco said. “Our new outage management system allows dispatchers, call center representatives and others who are responding to outages to share information in real time, including the cause of an outage and estimates for restoration of service.”

“We can’t eliminate the winter storms that will still bring power outages to our area,” Carrasco said. “But this tool will help us better inform our customers and make it easier for our crews to identify the reason for an outage and get it fixed.”

The Oracle-based software uses customer calls and monitors on large “feeder” line breakers to identify outages. As dispatchers assign crews, repair crews identify the cause of an outage and make repairs, that information is immediately shared with everyone else using the system. Additionally, customers can check outage information anytime using a map on City Light’s website. Information on the map is updated every 15 minutes. It can be found at http://www.seattle.gov/light/sysstat/.

“The Outage Management System is an investment in new technology for better customer service,” adds City Councilmember Bruce Harrell, chairman of the Council’s Energy, Technology, and Civil Rights Committee. “The new outage tracker map will give customers the information they want quickly and efficiently as we enter storm season.”

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