In July, Emerald PUD began a major reliability project to update its electric system and equipment between our substations in Elmira and Junction City. As part of the project, aging power lines are being replaced with bigger, hardier lines with more capacity to serve the growing community. Once the project is completed, Emerald’s power lines will be more resilient against weather-related outages and will provide enhanced reliability for residents and businesses in the area, from Veneta to Junction City.
The project also includes working jointly with Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) and local utility Blachly Lane Cooperative to build a “loop feed” between Emerald’s Cheshire and Elmira substations, a Blachly Lane Coop substation, and two sources of BPA’s electric transmission. This critically important work will benefit all three power providers, as well as our collective customers. The loop feed will allow power to be rerouted from an alternate location in the event of a major outage. It will get customers back in power quickly, without having to wait for repairs. It will also address outages that occur on the transmission system by allowing power to be rerouted to our Elmira and Junction City substations.
Although the project will provide many benefits in the future, it has compromised our level of service by causing multiple outages in the Alvadore/Elmira area since it began. We do not consider repeated outages to be acceptable, and it is not the level of service we strive to provide.
What is causing the outages?
Because the linemen are working on live power lines, system settings are modified to be more sensitive to faults. This means something as small as a bird or squirrel could come into contact with the line and instantly cause an outage. This makes outages more likely, but the sensitivity setting also protects the lives and limbs of the crews.
Crews do “hot work” like this regularly so they can make repairs without causing customers to be without power. And it’s frequently performed without incident or unexpected outage. Hot work is routine, which is why customers did not receive notice of the work before the project began. Unfortunately, this particular job has seen far more incidents than is common.
The outages that have occurred since work began in late July have been due to equipment failure, debris contacting our lines, and today, a broken pole that had been damaged by an insect infestation. Although our system would normally be able to withstand most of these issues, the sensitive system settings caused outages to occur. Below is a list of the outages and their causes.
- July 29 – EQUIPMENT FAILURE – A switch, which is similar to a breaker in a breaker box, blinked and later failed.
- July 30 – SENSITIVE SETTINGS – A fault was not identified. Possible bird.
- August 21 – SENSITIVE SETTINGS – A fault was not identified. Possible bird.
- September 4 – EQUIPMENT FAILURE – A “traveler,” a piece of equipment that holds the power line in place at the pole, failed while line was being replaced.
- September 5 – DOWNED POLE – The pole broke during construction. It was determined that the pole had been infested by insects high on the pole, although it had appeared to be in good condition and was not an old pole. Emerald regularly contracts with an agency to test and treat its power poles. This pole passed the recent groundline test which tests the pole up to 8 feet. It also passed the visual inspection. Due to the condition this pole was in, all other poles in the immediate area were sounded for internal damage.
Moving forward with the project
We have made the decision to pause work for the remainder of the week. Crews will return on Monday to pick up where they left off.
The sensitive system settings will remain in effect during the crews’ working hours and for the duration of the project, for the protection of our linemen. This means additional outages may occur in the coming weeks. We will do everything we can to prevent further outages from happening, and we expect the possibility of outages to be significantly reduced by the end of September when we have fewer crews working the area. The completion date for the project is mid-November.
We want you to know we hear you. We understand that being without power is frustrating and inconvenient, and may be especially difficult right now for those who are sensitive to the heat, trying to work from home, or at home with kids who are not back in school yet. Please know, this is not the experience we want our customer-owners to have.
At Emerald PUD, we have always made delivering reliable service to our customers our number one priority, and that has not changed. With the completion of this project, we will be able to provide better, more reliable power than ever before, and we hope to restore your faith in us. We are honored to serve you.