Electric companies plan responses ahead of winter storms

For about two hours, 1400 people were without power Monday evening. Boone Electric Cooperative said a switch had gone bad, causing the outage.

Chris Rohlfing with Boone Electric said they were able to “backfeed” power to the affected residents.

“So in other words, bring power in from another direction,” Rohlfing said. “The problem is we can’t do that real quick, it does take a little bit of time to do it and do it safely.”

Rohlfing said the piece of equipment was not able to be repaired and was replaced Tuesday during daylight hours.

Monday evening’s temperature was not as cold as the previous day or two, but it was still below freezing. ABC 17 News wanted to find out how electric companies prepare and respond to get power restored as quickly as possible in dangerously cold temperatures.

“Boone Electric always does everything we can to get the power restored as quickly as possible,” Rohlfing said. “Very often, though, how long it takes to restore the power depends upon what it is that’s gone bad. If someone has hit a pole and there’s wires laying on the ground, it sometimes becomes necessary to get the pole back up before we can restore the power. So it is totally dependent upon what it is that caused the outage.”

Rohlfing said that they will work to restore the most customers first, often starting with the main power line, and then work to restore the individual outages.

Ice storms are particularly troublesome for crews. Just a half inch of ice can add about 500 pounds to a power line.

“The guys would put the wire back up, and we’d get the power restored, and half a mile up the road the wire would break again from all the weight of the ice on the power line,” Rohlfing said, recalling a storm about four years ago.

Rohlfing said Boone Electric will hold a pre-storm planning meeting when there is an impending storm in the forecast.

“Hopefully, the storm doesn’t materialize, but if it does, we already have a plan for which crews are on call and what other crews can be brought in,” Rohlfing said. “The electric cooperatives in Missouri are very lucky in the fact that if the outage is really bad, crews can come in from other cooperatives to help Boone Electric get the power back on.”

Columbia Water and Light plans ahead of storms as well. She said snow can sometimes pose more problems than ice.

“It’s not so much the electric as the trees,” Connie Kacprowicz with Columbia Water and Light said. “We have a good tree-trimming policy where we keep the trees away from the overhead electric lines.”

Kacprowicz said crews will sometimes stay the night if they predict the weather will not allow them to make it to work the next day.

“They’ll go ahead and put chains on the tires,” Kacprowicz said. “We’re pretty much ready for emergencies anytime of year but especially when the weather gets bad we really make sure we’re ready to go and respond.”

Kacprowicz also said the crews will rotate and often take breaks while working in the frigid temperatures restoring power.

“They can warm up in their cab,” Kacprowicz said. “We urge them to take breaks. But also we can call in people from other communities if we have a big outage. So we already have that setup, we just have to make a couple phone calls and say, ‘hey, we need some help.'”