A Southwest Washington winter isn’t for the faint of heart. In a few hours a mild day can be overtaken by frigid winds and even heavy snow.
Harsh weather is hard on everyone and everything and it certainly puts the local electric grid through its paces. When the power goes out, line crews respond immediately to restore services as quickly as possible, while always putting public safety first.
Occasionally crews don’t know every location that’s without power. That’s why customer reports are so important during an outage. If the power goes out at your home or business, call the utility’s automated outage reporting line at 360-992-8000 or use the mobile friendly online outage reporting tool on ClarkPublicUtilities.com.
“Outage reports help us pinpoint where the damaged equipment is, which gets the crews on site faster,” Clark Public Utilities Transmission and Distribution Manager Mike Brown said. “But during incidents when there are many outages across our service area we’ll always address the dangerous situations first, then we get to work on infrastructure that will restore power to the greatest number of customers.”
Whenever a storm causes widespread damage and leaves large swaths of the county without power, utility staff make a quick assessment of how to be as efficient as possible with repairs. Once it’s safe to do so, crews repair transmission lines first, because they deliver power to tens of thousands of customers across a wide area. Next, they’ll move on to substations, which benefit several thousand customers; for many people repairs at this level may be all it takes for service to be restored.
After substations, crews move out to feeder lines that connect whole neighborhoods to substations. When those are finished, line crews move to primary lines, which deliver electricity to up to 30 customers at once. The final step in the process is correcting the outages that affect individual customers.
“That final step can be a little tricky because those single outages are occasionally tough to track down or they’re caused by some unusual conditions that leave one two houses without power even though the rest of the neighborhood is back on,” Brown said. “That’s really when those customer outage reports really help us.”
The speed a crew can make a repair often depends on the scope of the damage and a home’s position on the grid. Those living in and around urban areas will usually endure fewer and shorter outages, because the grid is more robust and power can be rerouted with ease. Rural residents or people along the end of a power line may experience more and longer outages, given nature’s seasonally mercurial temperament and the rugged and remote location.
That said, everyone should have an emergency kit, nonperishable food and a gallon of water per person per day for three days on hand in case of a prolonged outage. More information about building an outage kit is available on the utility’s website or at RedCross.org.
Utility employees start preparing days in advance of a big storm. Warehouse employees stage tools and supplies at the utility’s Operations Center so line crews can quickly grab what they need and head out. The utility also has agreements with contractor crews who will be ready to get to work at moment’s notice when called.
“Everyone gets to work during a big storm,” Brown said. “It’s just the way we do things for our customers.”
Energy Adviser is written by Clark Public Utilities. Send questions to ecod@clarkpud.com or to Energy Adviser, c/o Clark Public Utilities, P.O. Box 8900, Vancouver, WA 98688.
