An outside auditor has issued a positive opinion on Seattle City Light financial statements, the highest assurance that can be given...At a glance, this news appears to be in sharp contrast to state auditor reports released earlier this month that concluded the utility exercised inadequate controls over its reduced-rate programs. more ›

Seattle City Light inspectors have found more light poles emitting unsafe levels of voltage. more ›

An old tree is to blame for last night's power outage, cutting electricity for 3,250 customers on Capitol Hill and even some over in Eastlake. As luck would have it, the tree fell in one of the most inconvenient spots, bringing down with it the main power line that just so happens to feed power into northwest Capitol Hill. Seattle City Light said the power outage began at 5 p.m., and, as of 9:30 p.m. last night, nearly 950 customers were still without power; final repairs were expected to be completed by 3 a.m this morning. more ›

There is no question this week is going to be a hot one, as temperatures reach into the high 90s and perhaps even 100 degrees. As many people crank up the power and seek an air conditioned refuge away from the heat, Seattle City Light--here's their energy-saving tips to beat the heat--warns that their old equipment may fail as temperatures climb. Customers need to be prepared for potential outages. Grrreat. more ›

Seattle City Light will be bumping up rates by 2.3 percent, due to an increase in wholesale costs. Just back in April, the mayor promised no new rate increases in 2009; as City Light's long-term budget woes increased earlier this month, Nickels's $40K bonus to Jorge Carrasco, the director of City Light, became yet another embarrassment to the mayor. The new rate increase takes effect Oct. 1. more ›

We hear the power's out on 15th Ave this morning. Seattle City Light estimates it'll be back up by noon; they found a tree growing into a powerline. (That seems like a pretty fast-growing tree, to us, but we're not experts.) The outage area is from E Roy to E Pine, and from Summit to 29th, affecting about 4,000 people. We had thought the power outage might be storm-related, and this whole "tree, growing" angle sounds like "dog bites man." Sigh. UPDATE: "Crew has been able to isolate the problem and restore power to about 3,717 customers. There are approximately 400 customers still waiting for the crew to finish its work. The outage was caused when a large tree branch fell across a main feeder line." more ›

Last night we were standing on our back porch-like thing (which is actually more related, in terms of dimensions, to a hallway except instead of a bathroom at the end of it there's a Weber) in Wallingford. It was raining and we were drinking a can of beer and wondering where all the T-storms and hail were. Never showed, Double Doppler. And we thought back on some of the heavy weather that did show up as promised in the past few months. In fact some of the shingles that were blown off of the house up the street during the wind storm are still down there in the back yard, nearly completely covered by the spring grass. That violently diagonal stump a few houses up the hill? Still there. Still more unearthed than not. And this is relatively lightly winded Wallingford. They're probably still running on battery power in Duval. more ›

God dammit! We're in no way convinced carbon offsets are any kind of a solution to global warming, but the news that a King County court has decided that Seattle City Light can't use ratepayer's money to buy them pisses us off nonetheless. Their argument is that it should be general taxpayer money that saves the Earth, and that ratepayer money is for the operation of the utility. more ›

Seattlest's windchimes chimed last night. That's usually an indication that winds are stronger than average. Usually our chimes just sit there limp and dead. The windstorm that was promised for last night turned out to be tamer than anticipated, though, or at least our threshold for windstorms is set so high that anything below sustained 45mph winds now seems pretty weak. We're under the impression that if someone in Woodinville sneezes a forest of undecided trees will hurtle themselves at feeder lines, but we're not hearing reports of a lot of new damage today outside of a Q13 story on West Seattle this morning. Here are the outages Seattle City Light currently recognizes. more ›

At the Weather Underground there's a weather advisory for Wednesday night: more ›

The inhabitants of the Bering on 14th Ave E and E Thomas were delighted to see the Seattle City Light truck roll up last night around 4:30pm. We know because we called one of them, and he was all, "Fuck yeah, I'm delighted. You can quote me." more ›

It seems everyone we've talked to who has had a prolonged outage has pretty much gone it alone. Hope you can find a generator and a few space heaters to buy, or a hotel room, or a friend's place, or a whole lot of blankets. That sucks, though - Our lights only flickered. You should call someone. Good luck! more ›

It's been business as usual since the day after the storm in some Seattle neighborhoods. We eat, we drink, we Christmas shop, we gather all the shingles from the street and life goes on. Meanwhile, the Eastside continues to live red in tooth and claw. It's still mostly dark over there and crowds await Mel Gibson's next gasoline delivery at each service station. Hopefully it'll drive home how much energy it takes to power a 4000 square foot mcmansion full of today's technological wonders when someone's got to wait in line for gasoline to feed the generators. Hey, Eastside, maybe if you didn't try to cheap out of your property taxes by living near the city instead of inside of it you wouldn't be in this mess right now. Something you might want to think about next time the socialist tax collector comes around. more ›

We'd just stepped out of our shower this morning when the lights went out...went back on...went out...went back on...went out again. We had to put in our contacts by candlelight. Seattle City Light estimates there were 5499 other people sharing that experience with us. As of their 10:00am update: more ›

-"Runaway Train was the best song of the 90s." "You're fucking high, old man." more ›

Ever since Mayor Greg Nickels sent out a letter back in mid-February about Viaduct replacement financing, everyone who pays attention has been trying to figure out the math. We're all used to spin from City Hall, but there was a huge, crucial problem. In the letter, Nickels claimed that, "Today, with $3.2 billion already committed to the project, we have the resources needed to start building the tunnel." more ›

Seattle City Light offers a conservation program for businesses great and small. more ›

-Seattlest introduces you to the fantastic imagery available at Flickr.com via the Space Needle. more ›

Seattlest met some guy over the summer who wanted to talk about the biodiesel operation he was planning in Georgetown. There was a warehouse and a giant vat and honestly Seattlest was only so interested at the time. Seattlest sometimes has interesting opinions on what's interesting and what's not when Seattlest is drinking. The truth is that biodiesel in Seattle is interesting, and the big yellow billboards (pictured) driving around downtown are doing a good job of bringing vegetable-based fuels into Seattle's conciousness, even if they are only a tiny fraction of the fleet. more ›