On a rainy Monday afternoon, representatives from Puget Sound Energy and the city of Kenmore met beneath Kenmore’s troubled circuit 26 to discuss what the company plans to do to address resident’s concerns over frequent power outages.

Standing beneath a PSE tent in pouring rain in the 19500 block of 65th Avenue Northeast, members of the Kenmore City Council watched company spokeswoman RaeLynn Asah explain how the circuit runs through more than 125 private properties and some 1,500 customers.

“This is such a different circuit than most of the rest of them in our system,” she said.

This is due, Asah said, to former King County plans to construct a road along the route of the wires, which was later scrapped, but the power lines were still constructed.

“It’s a hodgepodge of easements in the area,” she said.

Circuit 26 runs between and over back yards and next to dense patches of trees. Asah said the drought and recent storms have combined to cause ever increasing power outages as trees that dried out over the summer are knocked into power lines by intense winter winds.

To help alleviate these outages, ‘tree wires’ will be installed on the circuit in 2017 on one of three groups of wires.

PSE engineer Mike Johnson said when a tree falls on two wires now, it will cut power for the entire circuit. Even a tree that leaves the wires intact and falls on the wires can cut power by disrupting the circuit as they are not insulated.

Tree wires are insulated, which mean that if a tree falls in it but does not break the wire it will not disrupt the circuit. Tree wires also bear more weight and are less prone to breaking.

Reclosers are also being installed in 2016 in neighboring circuits, which will benefit circuit 26. These reclosers will shut off power only in damaged sections of the line, allowing linemen to more accurately pinpoint where repairs are needed, facilitating quicker power restoration.

When a circuit loses power currently, the entire line must be inspected for more damage before it is turned back on.

Encroaching trees are a serious problem for circuit 26, with most access, or easements, being between 10 and 25 feet where the power company can legally tread to restore power.

PSE will be negotiating increasing these with each individual property owner, Asah said.

Vegetation crews currently clear trees on a four-year cycle on the circuit, two years less than most other areas, Asah said.

“Our vegetation management team is well aware of what the problems are,” she said.

The power company tracks how many outages individual customers suffer each year, and the duration of those outages, Johnson said.

PSE tries to keep each customers outages to an average of 1.3 annually, but he said the company understands the circuit does not meet that standard.

“There’s been a lot of outages on this circuit, so this circuit is a really high priority,” Johnson said.

Recent outages beginning in late summer have prompted outrage from residents and Kenmore City Council members, with many sharing stories of hundreds of dollars worth of food going bad.

Kenmore’s economy is also filled with home-based businesses, which many owners saying power outages severely affect.

The idea of burying the power cables has been popular with residents and council members, but Asah said PSE does not view that as a viable solution. She said power outages underground are often harder to find and repair, leading to longer repair times and an installation process which is intrusive for homeowners.

If the company were to bury cables, state regulations mandate the company bear 60 percent of the cost, with the city picking up the remaining 40 percent.

Other solutions could eventually come by way of ‘smart grid’ technology currently being installed along Kenmore’s southern border with Kirkland.

Known as distribution automation, Johnson said it involves computer-controlled circuit switches which automatically react to power failures.

When the circuit is switched now, power crews must manually restart transformer switches to restore power. Automation, he said, can reduce power outages from hours to seconds in some cases, although this technology will likely proliferate in the southern regions of the city before it reaches up to circuit 26, and only if the tree wires are ineffective.

PSE and the city of Kenmore are entering into franchise negotiations over easement rights, with many concerns being presented to the company. Negotiations are expected to continue into 2016.