CONCRETE, Wash. — Fresh brewed coffee powers customers at Concrete's Lone Star Restaurant, but there is no power at all when the electricity is out.
"It's extremely frustrating," said restaurant owner Cary Constantine. "It's a loss of revenue we can't afford."
Constantine said the tiny Skagit County town sees power outages four or five time every year, sometimes for days on end.
"When we don't have power that means our refrigeration is off. That means all of our freezers are off. The health department is up here asking what our plan is to save the food," said Constantine. "It isn't good."
But there is good news.
Puget Sound Energy will soon be moving 30 miles of electrical line underground. That will eliminate power poles being taken down by trees and wind during storms. The project will run along Highway 20 between Concrete and Marblemount. It's an area that tends to be hit harder by windstorms and is susceptible to wildfires.
"Our goal is increasing reliability and keeping the lights on for this community," said Puget Sound Energy's Reid Shibata.
The project is designed to do more than just keep the lights on. Monitors attached to existing transmission lines will help defend against wildfires and other natural disasters.
Thanks, in part, to a $46 million federal grant, PSE will be installing solar powered sensors and cameras that use artificial intelligence to detect everything from earthquakes to wildfire smoke threatening the power supply.
Equipment upgrades at Baker Dam will bring hydropower directly to customers all across Skagit County if power lines are down. PSE said the result will be fewer and shorter power outages throughout Skagit County.
"We anticipate a huge transformation and a direct reduction in the number of outages experienced by our customers," said Shibata. That can't come soon enough at the Lone Star, but the majority of the project isn't expected to be complete until 2029.
Still, it's something folks in Concrete believe is worth waiting for. "We need every break we can get right now," Constantine said.