All of the outages were related to winds. In some areas, the ground was so saturated that the wind knocked trees over. |
Customers will have an easier time paying smaller monthly bills, so we will expect to see fewer cases of customers walking away without paying a final bill because it is just too high. |
If we need to drain the water, we will do it at a point where demand for electricity is low. |
In response to higher electric costs, many customers have asked us to switch to monthly billing. We think monthly billing will especially help those on fixed incomes. |
It's a decision whose time has come. Bimonthly bills have gotten high, especially in the winter. |
On South Cloverdale Road, there were both poles and lines down, which took crews four hours to replace. Most of the customers hit were residential. There may have been a school without power, but that is less of a problem on a Sunday. |
The first outage was at 8:20 a.m., and the last customer was back on by 3:30 p.m.. Most problems were taken care of in one to three hours. |
The fix is from a combination of a few things: engineering improvements and sediment acting as a natural block. |
The leakage is reduced to very minimal amounts. |
There was also an outage from Stella Road west to the county line, those folks were out, too. |
We have heard from many PUD customers that they prefer smaller, more frequent rate increases versus larger, occasional rate increases. |
We'd like to see Bonneville use the (surplus power) sales to keep rates as low as possible. We don't need another rate-raising factor out of our control. |