Three Light Plants Become One, With a Promise of Cheap Electricity
The Union Electric Company and the Seattle Gas & Electric Light Company have merged into the Union Illumination Company. Boilers are being hauled to the Grant Street bridge powerhouse, and the new manager says rate cuts are two weeks away.
Now that the Union Electric Company and the Seattle Gas & Electric Light Company have consolidated under the name of the Union Illumination Company, arrangements have been completed for the consolidation of the larger electric light plants, the plant at the corner of Sixth and Olive streets and the one at the corner of Fifth and Jackson streets being moved to the power house on the Grant street bridge. This change has been talked of for some months but was not considered feasible until the consolidation of the two light companies took place.
Already workmen are employed in taking down the machinery of the plant at Fifth and Olive streets and this week, or early next week, four of the six boilers at this place will be carted to the plant on the Grant street bridge, the other two boilers being allowed to remain, as there will be no immediate use for them. About the middle of next month the Seattle Gas & Electric Light Company's plant, at the corner of Fifth and Jackson streets, will be removed entirely to the Grant street plant and nothing will be left outside of the general plant thus formed but the gas works on the Grant street zig-zag and the vats across the way on the corner of Sixth and Jackson. The consolidation of the plants is made in the line of economy and it is thought that the new company, the Union Illumination Company, will thus be enabled to make sweeping reductions in some of the rates for lights now in operation.
E. C. Kilbourne, general manager of the new company, said several days ago that he was working on a new and reduced schedule of rates for the incandescent lights which would be announced in about two weeks. Yesterday he said the new schedule is made possible by the consolidation of the plants and the attending reduction in the cost of fuel and general operation. It will give Seattle one large general light plant, such as are in operation in most large cities of Seattle's population, and the consumers will gain the benefit of the reduced cost of maintenance and operation.
“It will give Seattle one large general light plant, such as are in operation in most large cities of Seattle's population, and the consumers will gain the benefit of the reduced cost of maintenance and operation.”
This merger is one beat in the story that ended with Seattle owning its own utility: private light and gas companies consolidating, setting rates, and promising savings that the public had no way to verify. City Light was born a few years later out of exactly that frustration. The question of who owns the wires and the powerhouse — and whether consolidation lowers bills or merely concentrates power — is still the argument.
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