From the by M.D. Fletcher |
July 2011 |
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Those of you periodically able to avert your attention from the lure of your big, honking flat screen's airing of the starkly bizarre yet inexplicably popular Bachelorette episodes currently filling up what in a saner world would simply be dead air, may have noticed it's pretty darn hot out. Plus, it's been so long since we've had any precipitation that when it finally does rain, we'll probably all run outside and stand around looking up until we tragically drown like a gaggle of dehydrated turkeys. I don't know about you but personally, I'm kind of looking forward to it. Hot weather poses a number of challenges for electric utilities. For Columbus Electric, this time of year our irrigators are generally at their peak while at the same time our residential and small commercial consumers are running their cooling and refrigeration systems pretty much around the clock. However, except for a few very isolated areas, we have available more than enough capacity to meet the demands on the system and the needs of our members. This year, though, wildfires presented some real challenges. At one point in June, we had at least five separate wildfires burning across our 7000 square mile service territory. Our members in Arizona were particularly hard-hit with the ferocious Horseshoe 2 fire that threatened Portal and destroyed parts of Paradise and Whitetail Canyon. Working with the U.S. Forest Service and the Great Basin Incident Management Team 2, Columbus Electric crews were on 24/7 standby status to assist in rendering our facilities safe for firefighter teams as they went about the difficult and dangerous task of controlling and suppressing the blaze. At the request of the Incident Command Post, on June 3, 2011, our distribution line serving Paradise, Whitetail Canyon and Foot Hills Road was de-energized in order to help safeguard fire crews. Power to Paradise was restored on June 7, Foot Hills Road on June 9, Whitetail Canyon in segments ending on June 18 and final clean-up and full power restoration was completed on June 23, 2011. Fire damage included nine structures, four spans of primary conductor and three secondary service connections. |
Just to further spice up the situation, our crews were also working on fire damaged distribution facilities all along the Mexican border, northwest of Hachita towards South Wells and three separate locations along Interstate 10. Sister cooperatives around the state were also fighting their own wildfire battles. Navopache was contending in both Arizona and New Mexico with the huge Wallow fire, Otero County Electric Cooperative out of Cloudcroft was dealing with multiple fires in their eastern service territory and our friends up in Jemez Mountains Electric Cooperative were faced with devastating fires around Los Alamos and Santa Clara Pueblo. The Wallow fire was one of particular importance to electric utilities because of the Springerville Generating Station and extra high voltage transmission lines associated with it. The loss of any of these facilities has the potential of putting a lot of hurt on utilities all across the southwestern United States, particularly those most vulnerable like say, El Paso Electric, which evidently suffers inordinate hardship in keeping the lights on even under normal operating conditions. Since I have first-hand knowledge of just how difficult this job can be, I don't wish to be uncharitable to any other electric utility; I'm just saying that after many years of being impacted by some of the operational shenanigans of this particular utility, it appears to me that there, my friends, is an applecart just waiting to be upset. Our wholesale power supplier, Tri-State, is in much better shape and we have been assured that under even the worst scenarios, we'll still be good to go, just like we were last February when we were cooking all the way through the deep freeze and El Paso Electric customers in Las Cruces were left freezing in the dark. Perhaps that's because we are all about service, not profit and we don't cut any corners for any reason, especially to insure the boss gets his next fat bonus from the stockholders. So we are going to be there for you no matter what, rain or shine. Preferably rain. Gobble gobble. |
