Downtown Seattle asked to cut power usage

Seattle City Light is asking its customers in the downtown core to cut power usage to avoid a blackout, after a bank of transformers failed.

Utility spokesman Scott Thomsen says workers were doing maintenance on one bank of transformers at the Union Street substation Friday when the other failed. That means only two of the four banks there are working.

And with high temperatures hitting the 90s, officials are worried they won’t have enough power to go around. Peak demand on the substation could reach 100 megawatts, but its capacity right now is just 80 megawatts.