Earlier this week, we got a call from a reader concerned after receiving a Seattle City Light notice alerting to them for a planned daytime power outage later this week in Highland Park so a pole could be replaced. A 4-hour outage in the daytime might not have been a big hardship in the pre-pandemic days, but now a “residential” outage means cutting the power to many homes-turned-workplaces. So we asked SCL about it. Spokesperson Julie Moore tells WSB that the outage has been canceled and new notices about that were being taken around yesterday:

Seattle City Light remains committed to providing safe and reliable power while prioritizing the safety of our customers and crews. While important to maintaining and upgrading our infrastructure, we know planned outages can be burdensome, and even more so as our customers are at home working, teaching children, and maintaining a healthy life during the COVID-19 crisis. We’re temporarily adjusting our work to have the lowest impact on customers during this time.

As such, we are pausing all planned outages. Exceptions to this include emergency pole replacements where the work cannot safely be performed “hot”, emergency work necessary to restore service for customers who may be experiencing an outage, or to add a service connection for an essential facility (quarantine site, homeless shelter, etc.). As able, City Light will provide at least 48 hours advance notification for any of these situations.

Other pole replacement work will continue by placing new poles adjacent to poles in need of replacement and lashing them to the existing infrastructure, but we will wait until later to transfer services. City Light also will continue to do streetlight work and other work deemed essential as long as it does not require outages. Any work is in accordance with Governor Inslee’s Stay Home, Stay Healthy order and with protocols in place to meet all COVID-19 guidelines from the CDC, Washington Department of Health, and OSHA.

We will maintain this pause in planned outages at least through May 4, in alignment with the governor’s order. We recognize even as that order is lifted, many customers may continue to work or attend school from home. We will be thoughtful in our resumption of these activities, which are required to make repairs and upgrades to our infrastructure in a safe and efficient manner, and will do our best to work with customers to minimize impacts.