N Madison Ave, NE Day Road and NE Valley Road

Project overview

As part of an ongoing effort to improve electric safety and reliability on Bainbridge Island, we’re upgrading sections of the electric system along N Madison Avenue NE, NE Day Road, and NE Valley Road (see project map below).

We will replace several aging utility poles and the existing electric wire with tree wire, where feasible. Tree wire is a specially coated, overhead wire that’s designed to prevent an electric short (and subsequent outage) when a tree limb falls into a power line. By installing tree wire in other locations in PSE’s service area, we’ve reduced power outages caused by falling limbs by up to 95%.

We will also install underground cable along N Madison Avenue NE between NE Day Road and Manitou Beach Drive NE. Together, these improvements will increase the Island’s electric reliability by adding redundancy to the system, reducing the risk of power outages caused by falling tree limbs and allowing crews to restore power more quickly during outages.

We began preliminary work on this project in December 2020. Currently, the project is in the permitting phase. We will keep the community informed as the project progresses.