NEWS FROM WESTERN AREA POWER ADMINISTRATION
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 20,
2005
CONTACT: LaVerne Kyriss, 720-96207051, kyriss@wapa.gov
LOOSE GROUND WIRE MAY HAVE
CAUSED RECENT POWER OUTAGES
A loose ground wire on Western’s Archer-Sidney 115-kV Line may be the culprit in recent power outages that have plagued Kimball Electric Department and Western Area Power Administration officials.
“We’ve had repeating outages on this line,” said Nick Klemm, an engineer in Western’s Rocky Mountain Region. Outages occurred on July 2, 7, 8 and 19. Western sent out line patrols on July 7 and 8 to see if crews could locate the problem. But they didn’t find anything that they could link to the outages. “The line would come back into service after the outages,” Klemm noted.
Since we couldn’t figure out what was causing these intermittent outages, as a precaution, Western removed an unused coupling potential device located at the Jacinto Tap, he explained. “The relays at our Sidney Substation gave us an approximate fault location near Jacinto Tap,” Klemm said.
But on July 19, the line relayed twice. Western’s Dispatch Office in Loveland received a report of a grass fire. The Western crew went out to investigate and located a hanging ground wire on the line about 1 to 1 ½ miles west of Jacinto Tap. This is about 12 miles east of Kimball. The ground wire support hardware had failed and the ground wire was hanging about two feet from the north phase conductor.
This area was patrolled on July 7 but we don’t known what the condition of the ground wire was on that date, Klemm added.
It appears that the fire may have been caused by the fault when electrical current traveled down the loose wire to the ground. The wind-fanned fire spread to the northeast. Kimball city officials report that it burned about 3 square miles of grassland. Western maintenance forces have repaired the line.
Western markets and delivers Federal hydropower in 15 central and Western states to nearly 700 consumer-owned utilities including cities and towns across Nebraska .
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Western Area Power Administration annually markets and transmits more than 10,000 megawatts of power from hydroelectric powerplants owned and operated by the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 15 western and central states. It is part of the Department of Energy.
Serving the West with Federal hydropower
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