May 10th outage brings in mutual aid
When a spring snowstorm hit in the early morning hours of May 10 and a call for mutual aid went out, Tri-State didn’t hesitate to send crews to the San Luis Valley immediately. One of the seven cooperative principles, “Cooperation among Cooperatives” is key when disaster strikes and partners come in clutch as a valuable resource.
Engineer Manager Terry Daley stated, “Tri-State is a valued partner and has the knowledge, experience, equipment and materials to assist members with transmission repairs. Before the sun was up, San Luis Valley REC was in touch with Tri-State personnel to request assistance. Tri-State immediately began assembling personnel, materials and began the response.”
An initial assessment of the area found four transmission structures down and the power out from Waverly to San Acacio for REC members. As the sun rose and a better evaluation was done, the damage was found to be more extreme with a total of 21 transmission poles down. While Tri-State’s team was assembling to assist with transmission work, REC crews got right to work backfeeding distribution from the San Acacio sub through the Stockade sub.
Around 7:40 a.m. both the 115kV transmission line operated by Xcel Energy and the 230kV transmission line operated by Tri-State and Western Area Power Administration tripped due to heavy, wet snow resulting in a Valley-wide outage. By 9:40 a.m. Tri-State’s 230kV line was back in service and most San Luis Valley residents had restored power.
As temporary repairs and backfeeding were completed, most remaining REC members were back on by 1 p.m. “Mother Nature is unpredictable, but REC/Ciello is prepared to respond through strategic planning and response training. When the normal powerline serving San Acacio was taken out by the storm our back-up plan worked to restore power from an alternate route quickly. We apply this high level of redundancy throughout our electrical system to ensure reliability,” commented CEO Eric Eriksen.
Tri-State crews began arriving with poles and equipment to help replace structures later that day and additional manpower continued to arrive in the days following. Nearly 20 Tri-State workers spent six days rebuilding the downed transmission lines. By Thursday afternoon, all damaged transmission structures had been replaced and were back in service.
“REC has great partners like Tri-State and CREA who magnify our response capabilities. Tri-State had line crews and equipment on-site within hours. CREA provided trained safety personnel to help maintain the highest safety measures resulting in zero lost time accident events,” Eriksen said.
As the dust settles from the May 10 storm, it’s moments like this when the cooperative spirit shines that we realize how fortunate we are to be a part of a collaborative, supportive, heartfelt industry.