If you live in the Seattle area, as I do, you probably know a windstorm blew through here last night and knocked out power to thousands of homes. One of them may have been yours. And you also probably know we have two power companies, one city-owned, the other investor-owned. (The Pacific Northwest has a long history of battles between public vs. private power; but I won’t go into that here.) Here’s an interesting story from The Seattle Times:
“At the height of the storm, power went out for more than 50,000 Seattle City Light customers and more than 110,000 Puget Sound Energy customers …. By Sunday morning, City Light had restored power to all but about 7,000 customers, whittling that number down to 583 Sunday night. But more than 60,000 PSE customers woke up to no power Sunday … and about 38,155 were still waiting for their electricity Sunday evening. PSE estimated Sunday that some … customers may not have power until late Monday night….”
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2024881325_windstormdamages1xml.html
Huh?? The socialist power company is kicking capitalist butt?! Isn’t private enterprise, you know, more efficient? What happened? But wait, there’s more, this always happens after every windstorm! More PSE customers lose power, and wait longer to get it back, every time! How can that be?
Hmmm …
P.S., if you’re reading this you’re probably a City Light customer, because if you’re a customer of our local capitalist power company you’re most likely still freezing in the dark. Folks, try to keep the laughter down, please! Remember, people are suffering out there …
Maybe PSE has more customers than Seattle City light, so that their actual failure rate is lower.
Maybe PSE customers live in less densely populated regions where there is more territory to patrol for outages or where there is less redundancy in the grid.
Maybe PSE customers live on more rugged terrain that is more vulnerable to power outages from trees or other natural hazards.
Maybe most storms come from a particular direction, such as near mountains or adjacent to the Sound, where more PSE customers happen to reside.
Maybe PSE charges customers less, enabling them to use their savings for other things, such as purchasing a backup generator, if they desire to be prepared.
You assume that Seattle City Light only deploys governmental resources. Do they not also subcontract to for-profit contractors, similar to how WSDOT hires private firms for road projects?
Isn’t Seattle City Light the same organization that was recently taken in big time by a preposterous story from copper thieves? Wasn’t the person at Seattle City Light who was duped one of the most highly paid officials in local government?
Is this website ‘socialist?’ Does it do a better job on things like accuracy, grammar, punctuation, spelling, illustration, fairness, etc. than ‘capitalist’ news organizations like The Stranger?