The Alderwood Project:
Where We Stand and What’s Ahead
If you live in most of our service area, your power runs through Alderwood. We want you to understand why, and what that means for the outages happening this summer and next year.
For years, about 90 percent of our meters have depended on a single Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) transmission line. If that one line goes down, planned or not, thousands of our neighbors lose power at once.
That’s the problem the Alderwood project was built to solve. The good news is the hardest part is done. The line is built. What’s left is connecting it for use, and that work means a handful of outages between now and 2027.
Why this line matters so much
Most of Blachly-Lane’s service area gets power through substations connected to one BPA transmission line running near Alderwood. There is no second path. If that line goes out, whether from a storm or planned maintenance, the outage doesn’t stay small. It can affect nearly all our members at once.
Building a second connection, this one to Emerald People’s Utility District (EPUD), has been a goal for years. In 2025, we finished our part of it. Crews from Blachly-Lane and EPUD worked through the night on May 3, 2025, to complete finishing touches on our respective ends of the new Alderwood line. That’s the project you may have heard mentioned in our annual report.
What’s happening this summer, and why
With the new Alderwood line built, BPA can start work that’s been needed for 10 to 20 years: replacing the poles, insulators, and wires on their transmission line from Highway 99 to Lawrence Road. That work requires the line to be temporarily isolated, in sections, which is where our new Alderwood line comes in.
- May 3, 2025
An all night outage let our crews finish building the new Alderwood line itself.Complete - July 18th, 2026
A planned 3 hour outage at 10:00 p.m. the night of the 18th until the morning of the 19th to isolate the line. BPA, BLEC, and EPUD do some jumpering and switch work, then we reheat the line from EPUD instead of BPA.From then through the summer, members stay in power on the Alderwood and EPUD feed while BPA works on their section of the old transmission line. - August 15th, 2026 (UPDATED)
A planned 3 hour outage at 10:00pm the night of the 15th until the morning of the 16th to switch the feed back to normal. BPA has finished its work on this stretch and has requested the outage to replace jumpers and switch the line back. - Summer of 2027 (Estimate)
A planned outage, timing and length not yet known, when BPA’s new switch arrives and is installed. - Alongside the switch work (Estimate)
Separately, Blachly-Lane replaces the substation transformer that will become the hub for both the BPA and EPUD feeds. A mobile substation keeps members powered, but connecting and disconnecting it requires its own short outages. We’re timing this with the switch installation to keep the total number of outages as low as we can.
Where this ends up
Once EPUD’s switch is in, BPA’s switch is in, BPA’s reconductoring is finished, and our new transformer is connected, our members will no longer be sitting on a single, islanded transmission line. You’ll have two real feeds running into a new transformer that covers about 90 percent of our meters. And the switching gear in place will let us move between those two feeds without an outage, without you even noticing.
That’s the destination. What you’re seeing this summer is the work it takes to get there.
Common questions
Will I be notified before each outage?
Yes. This spotlight is meant to give you the bigger picture and the reasoning behind it. Specific outage notices with exact dates and times will come separately as each one approaches.
Why does an outage in one area affect 90 percent of our members?
Because three of our substations trace back to that single BPA transmission line. Until the new switching gear is fully in place, work on that line or the new connection point affects almost everyone downstream of it, not just members near Alderwood Substation itself.
What happens if there’s a storm during this work?
Our crews and EPUD’s crews are coordinating closely throughout this process specifically so we have options if something unexpected happens. We’ll keep members informed if conditions change our plans, but we are anticipating being back on the normal feed through the winter.