Tired of power outages? Seattle City Light working on the answer

If you’re OK with Seattle City Light receiving data about your electricity consumption every 15 minutes, then you’ll be happy to know that long-term power outages may become a thing of the past.

RELATED: Seattle City Light faces millions in lost revenue

The city utility is preparing to begin advanced smart metering. This will allow them to read power meters remotely, which city light spokesperson Scott Thomsen says could lower costs and give customers more power over their power.

It will also allow Seattle City Light to increase the effectiveness of its power grid.

“In the shorter term, what that information allows us to do is analyze the distribution grid for effectiveness and efficiency so we can look at where electricity is being used and when,” he told Seattle’s Morning News.

This, he says, will allow them to determine if a transformer, for example, is being overloaded in one neighborhood and remedy the problem, even before things go south.

“So, if we’re straining one, we can put out a more robust transformer and avoid an outage.”

But what about those pesky raccoons wandering the city and sparking unexpected outages? Or even fish falling from the sky? Though Seattle City Light won’t be tracking raccoons, they will know almost immediately when a power outage occurs. That’s because the new system will sense an outage and send an alert to the utility. It’s a “last gasp” before things go dark.

“… and we will send a crew before you can even get to the phone and make a call,” Thomsen said.

All the benefits of the system, according to Seattle City Light, can be found here. The entire system is expected to be in place by 2019.

The ACLU has expressed its concerns about the system, mainly that the smart metering is “surveillance-capable.” A letter dated May 25, 2017, addressed to councilmember Kshama Sawant and members of the Energy and Environment Committee states:

The smart meters to be installed in the homes of Seattleites collect far more granular data than SCL’s current, non-connected electric meters. Not only have smart meters been shown to be hackable, but they collect readings far more frequently and with a greater range of metrics than a once-a-month reading of a single power usage metric from the meters they replace.

You can read the entire letter here.

There are undoubtedly concerns about “smart” systems being hackable. Thomsen says in order to even know what show you’re watching on television, it would require data on a level Seattle City Light won’t collect.

“We are not interested nor do we have the time…”

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