Friday, November 26, 2010
Last updated 11:11 a.m. PT
A few dozen Kitsap County residents remained without power Friday morning, and it was a surprising group.
Customers served by underground power lines -- not the type of wires that get blown down in a windstorm -- were the last to get their power restored, said Puget Sound Energy spokesperson Dorothy Bracken.
Otherwise, everybody had juice after a week-long crisis caused by high winds Monday night, trees crashing into power lines and temperatures in the teens on Tuesday and Wednesday.
At the height of the outage, half of Puget Sound Energy's customers in Kitsap County were without power. So were residents of Vashon Island and others scattered around the Puget Sound region -- a total of more than 100,000 customers.
On Thanksgiving, "a few hundred" customers were without power, Bracken said. Seattle was mostly spared.
Why were underground power lines still out in scattered neighborhoods on Bainbridge Island and in Silverdale, Port Orchard and Bremerton on Friday?
The answer to that question contains a lesson for homeowners.
The problem is a phenomenon known in the power industry as "cold load pickup."
You could also call it "shock and awe" hitting a power system, even underground, where the repair is more difficult.
Big wires carrying tens of thousands of volts to neighborhoods can't handle the shock when the power is switched on during a deep freeze, and when homeowners have left their electric heaters, big screen TVs and other energy gobblers turned on. When temperatures are low, the wires need to be warmed slowly. They can't handle the hit from a huge, sudden load, Bracken explained.
So circuit breakers pop and transformers blow. It is the reason many Kitsap residents experienced disappointment on Wednesday; their power came on for a few minutes -- warming the heart and the home -- only to flip off again for a few hours.
When that happens, crews must restore the circuit breakers and transformers. It is a quicker job with overhead wires than with underground systems. On Friday, crews were still descending into underground vaults to take care of the subterranean problem, Bracken said.
Homeowners could help their neighborhood avoid such problems. When the power goes out, turn off the big stuff and the lights in your house. You'll reduce the load and avoid damage to your appliances caused by power surges.
Of course, in the long run, you should also be sure that your water pipes are insulated.
Though nearly everyone now has power, the water pipe trouble caused by the Thanksgiving Week Storm of 2010 is just emerging.
"We are extremely busy with frozen pipes in Kitsap County," said Wayne Bolton, manager of Roto-Rooter in Tacoma, on Friday morning.
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