Though some online offerings like traffic cameras will remain “powered off” till Tuesday, the city says its electrical maintenance work is over and much of the city website is back in business. Here’s the news release:

Work on the Seattle Municipal Tower electrical system scheduled for Labor Day weekend has been completed ahead of schedule. The City’s website and online applications are up and running and no longer impacted by this maintenance work. Maintenance work was conducted after City staff discovered a power transmission problem that impacted the Data Center.

“I want to thank the City staff who worked hard on this maintenance project, especially the employees of our Department of Finance and Administrative Services and the Department of Information Technology,” said Mayor Mike McGinn.

McGinn also announced that the 2013-2014 Proposed Budget includes $3 million in funding to plan for the next generation Data Center. This funding will allow the City to begin planning and designing alternatives for a new Data Center that will provide more capacity, redundancy and resiliency.

On Monday, July 23, 2012, the city of Seattle identified a power transmission problem in the Seattle Municipal Tower that directly impacts the Department of Information Technology’s (DoIT) Data Center and IT infrastructure of City Light and the Department of Transportation. One of several electrical busways used to provide power to different portions of the building had a higher-than-normal temperature level, which indicated that sections of it were in need of replacement. The city reduced the electrical load, which stabilized the bus and allowed the city to schedule the replacement for Labor Day weekend.

After the data center loads were moved to other electrical infrastructure, the bus was powered down on the evening of Friday, August 31. Maintenance work proceeded more quickly than anticipated due to favorable conditions. After testing and certification to ensure it was operating at a normal temperature level and could handle the load, the data center was returned to the restored bus late Saturday evening.

The City’s website and most online applications are functioning normally. Some non-essential applications, such as live traffic camera feeds, were powered down for the duration of the weekend and will be restored on Tuesday, September 4.