The independent., December 07, 2006, Page Page 13, Image 13

The INDEPENDENT, December 7, 2006
Page 13
Power of the People
By W. Marc Farmer,
General Manager,
West Oregon Electric Cooperative
Out-
age
Info
and
More
T h e
winds
that swept through our service
area on Sunday, November 12,
might not have been the most
severe or powerful winds we
have experienced, but when
combined with a good soaking
rain, they were strong enough
to knock trees down and blow
limbs into our lines. By 11:00
p.m. Sunday night we had lost
power to 85 percent of our
service territory. The outages
were so numerous and so scat-
tered that we did not have the
manpower to cover it all before
the next storm was anticipated
to hit on Wednesday the 15th.
With our Line Crews having
been out in the field over 30
hours, we had to make the call
to bring in three outside crews
to help us get everyone back
on before the second wave of
the storm. Clatskanie PUD sent
us a crew of three men and we
contracted with Michels Power
for two crews. They were a
great help to us and were ex-
cellent to work with to get the
system back together. Even
with them helping, it was not
until 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday
that we were finally able to re-
store power to everyone. A tree
took out the feed from PP&L to
our Olney metering point,
which caused 60 of our mem-
bers to be out for a day-and-a-
half before PP&L could restore
their feed to us. Mist West feed-
er serving 342 members was
such a mess it took almost 44
hours and help from one of the
extra crews to get it back up.
We still had some isolated
outages and two sections of
line down on our Timber to
Elsie Transmission line when
the second wave hit the next
day, and we were back in ac-
tion to get to all of the damaged
areas repaired and power re-
stored.
It was quite a long, grueling,
and costly week for us. Con-
tract crews don’t come cheap,
but it would have been impossi-
ble for us to get everyone back
on before the second storm,
which would have put us even
further behind. Our normal
work gets pushed back during
these long outage spells caus-
ing us to get behind in our new
connects, service work, and
tree trimming. Our primary con-
cern is getting the power back
on as fast as we can. We ap-
preciate your support and pa-
tience during these outage pe-
riods.
The first question I will an-
swer in this article fits right in
with my comments above.
What is the priority given to
restoring power to different ar-
eas or member? A valid ques-
tion and one I have answered
frequently during outages. Our
priority for the most part in
restoring power during outages
is this: 1) restoring power on
transmission lines as they de-
liver power to all of our substa-
tions and from metering points,
2) making sure all of the sub-
stations are energized and able
to deliver the power to the dis-
tribution lines, 3) checking
feeder lines that deliver power
from the substations to the indi-
vidual members meters, 4)
restoring power to individual
members.
The priority of which substa-
tions and feeder lines are
worked on first is based on the
number of meters fed by that
substation or feeder line. The
more members affected by the
outage receives the higher pri-
ority. In some instances, the
scope of work may be too much
and too dangerous for us to
work on with a smaller crew or
in the dark, so we may have to
isolate the problem and return
the next day with a larger crew,
the right equipment, and safer
working conditions. We do not
want to jeopardize the safety of
our Line Crew.
The second question I have
been asked recently relates to
an article in The Oregonian re-
garding a 3 percent rate de-
crease by BPA and how much
of an affect that would have on
our rates here at WOEC. I will
try to simplify a complicated for-
mula for as clear a response as
I can. The 3 percent rate de-
crease from BPA was for their
block power purchasers. The
complicated part for us is we
are both a “block” power pur-
chaser and a “slice” power pur-
chaser. It is split almost 50/50
for us, so essentially the 3 per-
cent rate decrease only applies
for half of our wholesale power
purchases, making it in reality
only a 1.5 percent rate de-
crease for WOEC. This is a
savings of about $37,000 on
our power costs.
That amount has been
quickly eaten up this year by
three events: 1) the price in-
crease in gasoline and diesel
for our line trucks, 2) the price
we pay for transformers has
doubled and tripled for various
sizes, and 3) we experienced
more outages than we budget-
ed for this year, due mostly to
the amount of rains we had at
the beginning of the year (re-
member the 37 straight days of
rain we had in January and
February) and the winds we
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