-Battery range and charging access are worries
for anyone considering an electric vehicle.
Now, Seattle City Light is working to ease those concerns.
-I think incrementally it does make a big difference
because ultimately, climate change is a reality.
-Can we bring these things together and what does it do
for our thinking about the natural world?
-Outdoor art adorns the Arboretum,
providing a stunning display high in the trees.
The allure of the Georgetown Steam Plant
makes it a popular tourist stop,
but it’s about to embrace a new future.
These stories and more next on "CityStream".
♪♪
-I’m Enrique Cerna.
Welcome to "CityStream"
from the Georgetown Steam Plant.
♪♪
Built by the Seattle Electric Company back in 1906,
it’s now a National Historic Landmark.
The steam plant’s two vertical Curtis turbines
are the only ones remaining in the world,
and it was those workhorses that helped power
Seattle’s extensive trolley car system in the early 1900's.
In a full circle moment,
today’s cutting edge vehicles have turned to the same source
that powered those trolleys a century ago --
electricity.
And a new program by Seattle City Light
is helping to reduce the impact of gas-powered cars
by making the adoption of electric vehicles even easier.
Michael Crow explains.
♪♪
-We live in a time of change -- a changing climate
and changing roadways of Puget Sound.
-I do see a lot of electric cars.
-Part of that change is driven by drivers like Laurie Kempen,
who decided to give up gas and chose an EV a few years back.
She wanted to reduce her carbon footprint
and found it easier than expected,
even as the infrastructure to power these cars
is still being built.
-I think it’s a lot easier.
Um, you know, I never have to go to the gas station.
It’s always charged and ready in the morning. It’s very easy.
-Infrastructure is the key concern for EV adoption.
It’s a change, and people are justifiably nervous
about battery range, charging access,
what life will be like untethered from a gas station.
Research by consulting firm Ernst & Young
found a lack of charging stations
is the top deterrent of potential EV buyers,
with 51% of U.S. consumers
more worried about finding a charging station
at nonresidential facilities than charging costs.
-They can use an app on their phone
or an RFID card to access this.
-That’s why Seattle City Light
is installing curbside chargers like this across town --
places for people to access Level 2 faster charging.
It’s designed to help those in denser housing
like townhomes and apartments.
-Seattle is an extremely dense city.
The majority of people who live here
do not have access to driveways or garages,
so that they want to be able to have their own
type of charging infrastructure.
-31 stations like these are going in,
focused in residential areas.
At $0.21 a kilowatt, which is about three miles of driving,
it’s cheaper to fill up than the cost of gas,
and interest is high.
When City Light asked for community input on locations,
they received more than 1,800 requests.
-So we’re trying to keep that from being the hurdle
that people are stumbling on before they go out
and they look into buying one.
The more infrastructure that people have access to,
it’s more of an idea that "An electric vehicle is for me."
-The City of Seattle has a goal
to reduce transportation emissions 83% by 2030.
An important part of that
is getting more gas engines off the road,
especially in the urban core of Seattle,
where a large percentage of air pollution and emissions
comes from transportation sources.
Energy from SEL is 86% clean hydropower,
and every car off the road helps.
A study by Cox Automotive found Americans
bought about a million fully electric vehicles in 2023.
-I think incrementally it does make a big difference
because ultimately, climate change is a reality.
-They are already seeing results.
This station at Portage Bay
is often busy near Laurie Kempen’s home.
-You know, anything that makes it more convenient.
-And though she charges at home,
she’s glad her neighbors in apartments
can access the same lifestyle changes.
-I do everything that I can to reduce my carbon footprint,
and I hope that more and more people will do the same.
I think that our government and governments around the world
really need to make massive changes
in order for us to maintain a habitable planet.
-There we go. -It also helps recent adopters
like Evan Pham, who took the electric plunge
just after Thanksgiving.
-No, do not have a charger at home.
I do live in a house, but I have a detached garage,
so I need to actually go through the process
of installing one -- -So he frequents
this city charger in West Seattle’s Alaska Junction.
-...just to get me in between the big charges.
So like, right now, it’s, like, an errand that I’m doing.
I’m going to pop over to Trader Joe’s
and while I’m there, this should be ready.
If you get a charger and can find one, which is the key,
um, they’re really fast.
So usually, I’m here for no more than, you know, 20 minutes tops.
But that usually gets me from a 30% to an 80%,
which is pretty much all you need to get around
for about a solid week or so.
-Proof of concept,
as the program looks at next steps.
-We need to learn from these.
So we want to get these up and running.
We want to see how the public interacts with them.
Uh, we’ll definitely watch the data,
see which ones are being used more.
And then we’ll probably do some follow up, find out, you know,
what the public thinks, uh, before we start another round.
-Changing the streets of Seattle
one charger at a time.
-As of this month, Seattle City Light says
nine of the stations are operational,
with 18 awaiting inspection before activation,
so work on the project continues.
For more information, including the location
of charging stations,
go to seattle.gov and search for Curbside EV Charging.
Just ahead, art in the Arboretum.
A stunning new sculpture now hangs from the trees.
See how it came about as "CityStream" continues.
♪♪
-Welcome back to "CityStream" from the Georgetown Steam Plant,
a community space that holds galas,
art shows, and educational programs.
Across town, art and nature have been joined together
in a dramatic new sculpture
at the Washington Park Arboretum.
Brian Callanan has our story on Union,
a unique piece of outdoor art.
♪♪
-Alright. Ready?
-Installing one of John Grade’s sculptures
isn’t just a walk in the park.
-I would stop there, John. -His latest creation,
called Union, took a crew of a half dozen people
pulling... and adjusting -- -Just testing.
-...to lift 220 pounds of art.
-Go a little bit more. You’re still slack.
-And you won’t find any walls in this gallery.
This piece hangs above a path in the Washington Park Arboretum,
providing what Grade sees as a union of art and nature.
-That’s the big message, you know,
can we bring these things together,
and what does it do for our thinking about the natural world
when we see something like this?
-The sculpture, approved by University of Washington
Arborists, is bolted into eight trees
and suspended with stainless steel cables.
Union spans more than 100 feet,
with a combination of fishing line netting
and the true magic of this sculpture --
elongated ovals of blue and green resin
cast in laminated Ceiba wood.
There are more than 6,500
of these cast resin pieces in the sculpture.
They’re intended to look like the cell structure of a tree.
-John was really interested in tree cells specifically.
-That’s Quinlyn Johnson, who worked with Lindsey Champlin
as the co-leads on the Union project.
Their task was to model this sculpture
after a fallen Western red cedar
Grade found in Discovery Park
that had a trunk divided into two liters
with two very different sets of concentric growth rings.
-One had many, many more growth rings,
which were much tighter together,
and the other one had looser, fewer, half as many rings,
but doing all kinds of strange patterning and shaping.
-After creating the resin cells,
the project came together
by mimicking the outline of the growth rings,
which you can see from underneath the sculpture,
even if you’re laying down on the job.
-In the net, you can actually see there’s, like, strata
in the way the pieces are hung on the net
from, like, large to small pieces,
and then it starts over again, large to small.
-And looking closer,
no two pieces are exactly the same.
While the inspiration comes from a microscopic view
of the cell of a Western red cedar,
the perspiration comes from nearly six months
of casting work.
-When you’re doing large-scale sculpture
or work in general, you need a team.
-And it’s a team of 15 artisans
with different backgrounds and expertise levels.
-And so, that brings a lot of different perspectives
to the table, and it makes it much more interesting.
And also, there’s a lot more possible
because of all the different perspectives and experience.
-Ready? 3, 2, 1. Yeah! All right.
[ Applause ]
-Providing a different experience at the Arboretum,
a living museum with more than 20,000 plants
from over 100 countries is what Christina Owen is all about.
-I’m a strong believer that one of the keys to education
and learning is enjoyment and fun.
-Owen is director of the University of Washington
Botanic Gardens.
-This sculpture, for me,
really sits at the intersection of art, nature, and science.
-The U-Dub has been planning the sculpture for nearly two years,
and says the artwork will not have a negative impact
on wildlife.
-This is just part of one of those elements
that we can bring in to make the Arboretum a special place.
-And Owen is excited to see the special changes
Union goes through each season of the year,
weighed down by winter rain or sparkling in the summer sun.
-It looks different from different angles, too,
and it’s just that continued representation
of just everything that is encompassing of life
and in the Arboretum and in trees.
-It’s a changing sculpture for a changing world.
-I think this is very, very interesting.
It’s a different way of creating art.
♪♪
-But John Grade, who’s built hanging outdoor artwork
like this all around the globe,
has stayed grounded with one unchanging fact.
-I can never compete with a natural world.
So you’re going to get more out of a tree
or a walk in the forest
than I’m going to be able to offer.
-Wow. It’s super magical if you look --
-But that’s just one branch of the Union story.
It’s been said that great art picks up where nature ends,
but maybe art can do something even greater
when the place where nature ends is just the beginning.
-Hopefully, what the sculpture will do
is it offers something more than what I’m trying to do.
It might give you a little window into this idea
that a group of people come together
to make something like this,
and then we sort of blend this natural world in
with kind of culture and with society.
And I think that’s a nice thing to sort of,
as you’re having a walk through this space,
just sort of contemplate that after you’ve had the experience
of seeing it. [ Indistinct chatter ]
-There we go. [ Laughter ]
-Union will be a temporary sculpture at the Arboretum
in place for about five years.
You can see it free every day from dawn to 8:00 p.m.
Just ahead on "CityStream",
a close-up look at the Georgetown Steam Plant
and why it’s intrigued generations of Seattleites.
♪♪
-It’s now been 70 years since the Georgetown Steam Plant
last produced electricity, but it played a major role
at the beginning of the 20th century,
providing power to a rapidly growing city.
Today, the steam plant has given way to hydroelectric dams
and sleek locations like the newer Denny Substation.
But how exactly do Seattle residents get their electricity?
Dennis Bounds explains.
-This probably comes to mind when you think of a substation.
Not this.
The unique metal design grabs your attention.
Inside, it has the same collection of electrons,
protons, and neutrons as any other substation.
But how is the energy utilized?
-We started planning on this project back in 2003.
It will not be your grandfather’s substation.
-Michael Clark knows this project well.
The first question to him -- what does a substation do?
-The easiest way I could describe it for somebody,
everyone has a cellphone,
and everybody gets a charger with that cellphone.
And usually, like an iPhone -- I have an iPhone,
and there’s a cube, and that’s a transformer.
That in itself is a substation.
And I plug it into the wall
and it takes the voltage from the wall,
it steps it down to the lower voltage
that my cellphone needs to charge and operate on.
-That simplifies things.
Substations take the power surging in
from high voltage lines
and convert the flow to a manageable level.
So, when a city life customer flips a switch, instantaneously,
an electrical charge powers the lamp,
producing the glow that lights an entire city each night.
But let’s back up a step. How are substations energized?
How do Seattle residents get their power?
♪♪
-Well, for Seattle City Light, primarily,
we generate our power from hydro resources.
We, of course, own our dams up on the Skagit River.
-That includes Ross Dam,
named after City Lights first superintendent J.D. Ross,
Diablo Dam and lesser known Gorge Dam.
-And over in Boundary. -He’s referring to Boundary Dam
way up in northeastern Washington
along the Canadian border.
The hydropower from those four dams provides City Light
half the electricity its customers need.
That fast moving flow of water spins turbines
that produce electricity.
From there, it’s increased to higher voltages.
-From the generators, the power is transmitted
through very high capacity, high voltage transmission lines
that bring it from the generation source
down to the city and will come in to a substation
much like Denny.
-Some high voltage lines carry 500,000 volts.
Compare that to your average electrical outlet
at just 120 volts.
-The lines coming into Denny right now will be 115,000 volts.
They will get reduced down to 13,000 volts
for the circuits out in the street.
And at the vaults from there,
the transformers would then reduce it down to the voltages
that the buildings require for their operation.
And the substation serves to provide
a safe transmission of that power.
-But even with all the electricity
surging into this substation,
it’ll produce some of its own power.
-We’re looking to improve the sustainability aspect
of the facility as much as possible.
We do have some solar installation
along the north perimeter.
-Heat recovery will also contribute.
-Heat is generated in, you know,
any transmission or transformation of power.
So when the circuits are loaded
and there’s a lot of circuit flow,
there will be heat generated.
We’re recovering that heat from the switchgear room
and then piping it in to the facilities.
At full capacity of the substation,
we’re hoping that it will potentially
make our community spaces net energy zero.
-Even though hydroelectricity bypassed steam power,
making it obsolete,
the Georgetown Steam Plant has found new life.
Not only is it a historical gem, but as Brian Callanan reports,
it’s also a popular tourist location,
and plans are in the works for much more.
-The place is gritty, grungy, and grimy.
So why have 300 people shown up to look at it?
-That’s pretty cool.
-You don’t see this kind of stuff every day.
-It’s a perfect place for a Frankenstein movie.
-It’s the Georgetown Steam Plant,
a boiling hot blast from Seattle’s past.
-See how it's connected on the back like that?
-And there’s all these different places in here to explore.
It’s just an amazing space.
And besides that, it’s an incredible piece
of Seattle history.
-The Seattle Electric Company built the steam plant in 1906,
mostly to power its streetcar system.
-The Seattle we know of,
the different neighborhoods with the central downtown core,
was made possible by the electric streetcar system
that was here in the early part of the 20th century,
and the steam plant played an essential role
in providing power for that system.
-But the plant’s usefulness was short lived.
Just a decade after these turbines were first fired,
steam power was getting short circuited
by a cheaper source of electricity --
hydropower.
And over the years,
the facility that had ignited a city’s growth --
...became just a hot backdrop for a dance video,
band concert, or zombie movie.
But you can’t keep a good plant down.
-I’m just amazed how preserved it is.
-The Georgetown Steam Plant is firing up a lot of excitement.
-Back in the day this place was built,
a gauge was almost a work of art.
-Now that Seattle City Light, the owner of the plant
has opened it back up for tours.
-So we’re standing in the real heart of the building --
the engine room.
-It’s basically an open house
and people are free to come in and walk around,
and there’s volunteers here to answer questions.
-So we have two vertical turbo generators.
-We take you through the building.
We tell you about the history.
We tell you about the equipment in here.
-This spark plug is what makes the explosion.
-We have one group of guys who are here all the time.
They’re guys who make these miniature replicas
of old steam engines and put them on display here.
It kind of adds a really cool sound to the building
because you hear the little engine spitting and firing
and it’s really cool. -Yeah, there you go. Yeah.
-Instead of building this out of structural steel,
they decided to build it out of reinforced concrete.
-Mike Aronowitz is a senior environmental analyst
at City Light.
He volunteers his time to give tours here.
-I just love history.
But then, the more and more that I see other people engage
and interact with the building, their eyes light up
and they ask questions. -The steam turbine
is the silver unit.
-It’s just great, like, meeting people
who are interested in the building.
-I think it’s really cool about how everything works.
I took 44 pictures of the whole place.
-It’s lucky for these visitors
there’s a steam plant here at all.
It just barely escaped the wrecking ball.
-So after the building was decommissioned in the 1970's,
there was talk about demolishing the building,
but we discovered the significance of the building.
In particular, we had the last two operating examples
of Curtis steam turbines,
and that helped save the building.
-In fact, the Georgetown Steam Plant is now
a National Historic Landmark.
-It’s interesting to see all this actual physical presence
instead of all the computer and little, you know, chips.
It’s very intriguing, and we should preserve it.
-It’s important to recognize where we came from
and how we got to where we are today.
And it also has significance for the future.
-It’s called a side plate.
-It’s a place that brings people together to share it.
And that’s really important for building a civic community.
-The electricity the Georgetown Steam Plant
generated a century ago helped shape modern Seattle.
Today, it’s generating new memories as a time machine,
taking visitors on a trip 100 years back to the city’s past.
-This is our heritage. This is who we are.
And you’re just able to step back in time.
And I have a connection to this place.
I didn’t even know it. It’s cool.
-Yeah. -It’s really cool.
-It’s been a few years since that feature first aired.
Let’s bring you up to date.
In 2021, the nonprofit Georgetown Steam Plant
Community Development Authority
signed a long-term lease with the city
to assume programing and operations of the plant.
Joining us now, Sam Farrazaino, he heads up the organization.
Well, Sam, tell us why the CDA decided to focus
on this power plant. -Well, this is, uh,
truly my most favorite building in all the world.
Just the history, the creativity,
and the engineering that is in here.
Uh, the honor to, like, bring that back to life
and give it to the community has been
the mission of the organization since we heard City Light
was interested in finding a partner.
-So down the road, what kind of events
are you hoping to host here?
-Oh, well, we’re already doing a bunch of different, uh,
dance and theater and music, um, photo tours.
We’re doing, uh, ghost hunting.
We’re doing all kinds of different things.
But the goal is really
to make the building universally accessible
and be able to do more and more of those types of things.
Uh, really to get anybody and everybody in here
to be inspired by this space and the history.
-So with its age,
I imagine that you have to do a lot of work and upkeep.
-Yeah, we are in a really deep and long and rich,
uh, planning phase, working with the city,
uh, working with City Light, with our structural engineers,
with our designers and architects,
uh, to really understand
how the building will function in an earthquake or in a fire
and what the changes we are going to bring to it
will -- how they will affect that.
Um, so we don’t have the final answer yet,
but we have a lot of the information.
It will need a full seismic retrofit, uh,
fire and life safety, smoke control,
all that kind of stuff.
Um, and we’re looking for universal accessibility.
So being able to get folks of all abilities
up to the top of the top of the building, um,
so that’s elevators and stairs and egress and fire exiting.
Right now we’re trying to do some minimal work in that,
uh, towards that big project, uh, things like --
that the fire department would like to see us do
to protect people in the interim
in the events that we do now.
-Just to make it safe. -Yeah.
-So public tours -- you do public tours.
Tell me about that. When are they available?
-Yeah, so every second Saturday of the month,
from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., we open the building
and you can wander through on your own,
check out all the different areas.
Or we have guided tours with,
uh, incredibly intelligent docents who actually know
how all of the individual pieces of machinery work
and City Light sponsors
that open house every second Saturday.
-One last question. What makes this so special?
-Oh. [ Laughs ]
Uh...
I have not met anybody who has walked in here yet,
who hasn’t verbally been just like, "Oh, my gosh",
been inspired.
This, to me, is the industrial cathedral.
The light streaming in the windows,
the history that is here,
it brings it -- the whole thing alive.
Years ago, I told City Light I would, uh, clean the toilets
and mow the lawn and everything if I could just live here.
And they laughed at me. But, uh.
But now I have the keys for 60 years.
And really, the goal is to get the community
to share in this amazing resource.
-Thank you, Sam.
Appreciate all your passion for this place.
We’ll be right back.
♪♪
-And that wraps up this edition of "CityStream"
from the historic Georgetown Steam Plant.
If you’d like to see more of the Seattle Channel programing,
go to our website SeattleChannel.org
and search for Feature Shows.
I’m Enrique Cerna. Thanks for joining us.
♪♪