Ok it’s not sexy, but PSE online discussion Monday of underground transmission lines should be informative  

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Let’s face it, listening to a discussion about underground transmission lines is about as sexy as watching paint dry on a hot summer’s day.

But hear me out. If you’ve lived on Bainbridge Island for any length of time, you’re acutely aware that we have power outages from time to time – mostly in the late fall and winter – but you never know when a rare of gust of wind might occur out of nowhere and shut things down.

Over the years, our local Puget Sound Energy has been trying to address this problem. Trimming back trees along transmission line routes has not always been a popular solution, so the utility has been slowly moving in a different direction.

PSE recently received feedback from the community on potential route options for the transmission lines that would connect their Murden Cove and Winslow substations.

The utility received 106 submissions commenting on the potential routes, as well as some specific routing criteria. The company’s project team is now analyzing that feedback and is working towards identifying a preferred route, which is expected to be shared with the Bainbridge Island community in fall 2021.

In addition, PSE heard interest from the community on the potential for undergrounding transmission lines, and is inviting the Island-wide community, the Bainbridge City Council and Bainbridge City staff and to an online community information session on August 16 from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Topics to be discussed will include an overview on underground transmission lines and a discussion of their trade-offs. Attendees will be able to submit questions to a panel that includes an independent underground transmission line expert and representatives from PSE.

If you are interested in joining the information session, please RSVP via psebainbridge.participate.online. PSE recommends you add the event to your calendar through Zoom’s confirmation email since each participant will be given a unique link to access the meeting.

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