It's Electrifying! - December 6, 2006

IT'S ELECTRIFYING!

This article was written by OPALCO General Manager Randy J. Cornelius:

As I was on my way home from the mainland late Sunday morning, I received a call about the storm and resulting outages. I was told that OPALCO crews had been on Mt. Constitution since 4:30 a.m. attempting to restore power. I agreed that it was a good idea to stock the OPALCO office at Eastsound with lots of food because it didn’t look like a quick fix, and weather conditions were deteriorating. After an anxious ride on the ferry, I arrived at the Eastsound OPALCO office in the early afternoon, and about an hour later, the whole county lost power.

The first outages affected Mt. Constitution and the communication towers around 4 a.m. on Sunday morning. Crew was dispatched, and, as the morning continued, staff from engineering, operations and member services all began arriving to address the needs of the cooperative and implement emergency operational procedures. Unfortunately, the crew on Mt. Constitution was unable to proceed because the snow was too deep. As the outage progressed to the lower elevations, it affected the transmission line on the north end of Lopez and the west side of Orcas and Shaw. Shortly after that, the transmission lines that serve Blakely, Decatur and the east side of Orcas went down. The west side of San Juan Island, as well as the Roche Harbor area up into Limestone, Gull Cove and Rouleau Road, also went down. Around 60% of OPALCO members were now without power.

Hundreds of outages throughout the islands were caused from trees, limbs etc. falling on our power lines. As lines were being repaired and electrical loads were being picked up, we began experiencing overloads due to excessive cold and too much demand on our system. In addition, we would often restore power on a line only to lose it again as trees and branches kept falling on yet another portion of the line.

OPALCO ended up having to bring in four contract crews (16 men) with twelve vehicles plus equipment. Because Lopez was restored sooner than the rest of the islands, linemen from Lopez helped out on Orcas and San Juan. Our crews – and some of our management staff – worked around the clock, and I was extremely impressed with their ability to maintain focus and keep working under such harsh conditions. By Thursday, power had been restored to most of our members.

However, our radio repeater is located at the top of Mt. Constitution, and the power lines needed to be fixed so our radio system would work more effectively. Throughout the week, we were aware that several spans of line on Mt. Constitution serving the KVOS tower, including local cell phone service and OPALCO and San Juan County communications equipment, were also down, and their backup generators had failed. These problems seriously hindered and endangered storm relief efforts. While the maintenance people and people from the county worked extremely hard to get up the mountain, they were not successful.

On Wednesday, OPALCO brought in a chained loader to determine the feasibility of coming into the tower site from the north. After realizing that this would be highly dangerous, snowmobiles were brought in Thursday morning to access the mountain from the Vusario area, where crews are currently working to restore power.

OPALCO and the county will be addressing this very critical issue of maintaining and/or restoring these lines of communication in the event of interruption of service.

In looking back, I have to say that, despite the numerous outages, our system held up pretty well when you consider how bad the storm really was. This storm was unusual and very challenging in that trees and limbs falling from snow load caused 90% of the problems. The board and staff will be reviewing this week’s events to determine what improvements can be made.

One of the things that takes so much time during outages is that the crews have to physically go to affected substation breakers to operate them. They also have to go to individual members’ residences and businesses to identify and repair problems, which is extremely time consuming. The good news is that after two years of research by OPALCO staff and directors, the board recently approved implementation of an automatic meter reading (AMR) system. In the next four to five years, OPALCO’s AMR system will be gradually be phased in, enabling us to identify which members have power. Utilizing the AMR system, along with extending our fiber optic lines, will enable us to automate our distribution system so we can open and close the circuit breakers in our substations and reclosers and circuit switchers in the field remotely with our computers. Then the crews will not have to travel as far, which will keep them safer and save them time.

We will continue, as we have for many years, to find opportunities to underground overhead distribution power lines that are vulnerable. One way that members can help would be to allow our crews to come onto your properties and cut away danger trees and vegetation that could potentially endanger the system. I would also like to encourage our membership and property owners to assist us when easements are required to underground the system. Another way members could help us during outages is to make sure you have telephones that are not dependent on electricity to work. Until we get our system automated, we often need to communicate with members to determine just where outages originate and how extensive the outages are.

On a positive note, Island Network experienced no storm related outages, which was extremely helpful for inter-office communications.

It is now Thursday afternoon, and this article has to be submitted. I certainly hope that our islands have settled down a bit and that basic comfort and communication systems have been restored. I must tell you what a pleasure it is to be part of OPALCO. The staff demonstrated such a high level of expertise, dedication, focus, cooperation and just plain stamina during this crisis that I knew we were in good hands at all times.

OPALCO
Member Owned & Operated