March 7 outage in northern SLV
According to Mark Stutz with Tri-State (REC’s power supplier), “at approximately 4 p.m. Monday, March 7, a Tri-State contractor was excavating a hole to relocate a structure on our SLV-to-Stanley tap, a 115-kilovolt transmission line, in support of an Xcel Energy project. During the excavation, the existing structure sagged into the excavated hole, due to sandy soils. The sagging structure allowed the conductors on our transmission line to contact an energized Xcel Energy 69-kilovolt transmission line, which caused the Xcel Energy line to trip off. To protect the crews, the tripped line had to remain de-energized, while the sagging structure was stabilized and wires removed from Xcel Energy’s transmission line.”
The incident took out power to both Xcel and SLVREC/Ciello customers in the northern part of the Valley. Three REC substations are fed from Xcel lines: Oxcart and Moffat substations are two of those and were included in the outage. The incident affected about 1,400 REC members and 2,000 Ciello customers. Xcel, Tri-State and SLVREC continue to commit resources to improve infrastructure for electric grid reliability and resiliency here in the SLV.