VVEC working to prevent future outages

Lightning, livestock among culprits

By Joy Hampton

October 9, 2009 — A cow is responsible for a recent power outage in rural Claremore. It might sound funny, but Verdigris Valley Electric members say they aren’t laughing.

“I was having guests over for dinner,” said one VVEC member who asked to remain anonymous. “The power was out for an hour. When I called they said a cow leaned on the wire.”

Rogers County residents in the rural Claremore area serviced by VVEC say frequent power outages have left them frustrated. The electric cooperative reports it is working to solve the problem.

“There was an addition north of Claremore that had way more than its share of outages,” said Kimberly Loffer, VVEC spokesperson. “Several different linemen and crews looked at and worked the outages. Many trees were cut.”

Loffer said despite outages, there is often community resistance to tree trimming.

“It seems that some people don’t care how often their electric is off or who it affects. They don’t want their trees trimmed,” said Loffer. “We finally got it all cleaned up and also found a lightning arrester with a tiny pinhole in the top. Both were problems and the addition has not been out since. Sometimes intermittent problems are so hard to find.”

Outages can be caused by everything from a vehicle hitting a pole to livestock breaking a guy wire. Loffer said in rural areas livestock are often an issue.

“Lightning is a big issue during storms in this area,” said Loffer. “We have a lot of lightning damaged equipment after a lightning storm in the area east of Claremore.”

Trees are an ongoing issue with many weakened from previous ice storms still breaking off during high winds and causing trouble.

“We fix one issue then another one completely unrelated causes another outage,” said Loffer. “We know it is frustrating to the members that are part of these outages. It’s frustrating for our linemen when they think they fixed a problem only to have the line go out again. They have to start all over again.”

VVEC is a distribution electric cooperative with headquarters in Collinsville. The coop serves commercial and industrial consumers as well as residential members. VVEC maintains over 4,500 miles of electric line in portions of Nowata, Osage, Rogers, Tulsa and Washington counties. It is the third largest out of 26 electric cooperatives operating in Oklahoma based on number of meters serviced. The 3,200-square mile territory is served by 92 employees.

“We are working diligently to fix the problems we can control,” said Loffer. We are also reconfiguring our protection schemes for the area so an outage caused by something like a car wreck (or the cow and guy problem) will affect as few members as possible.”



Reported major VVEC outages in the Claremore area:

Oct. 3: Cow rubbed guy wire hard enough to brake wire out of the top of a transformer. The wire got up against a ground and knocked out the breaker in the substation.

Oct. 1: Lightning blew a fuse affecting 71 members.

Sept. 21: A storm with high winds and lightning broke two poles on a feeder line and did considerable lightning damage to the area as well as damage and outages in other areas.

Sept 16: A trailer house being moved cut a corner short and broke a primary pole, knocking out a feeder in the substation.

Sept. 12: Wind (not a storm) blew a dead tree over. The tree was well off the right-of-way, but it was tall enough to hit the line when it fell.

Aug. 10: Wind blew (during a storm) two trees in the line. The trees were about a mile apart. Lightning also damaged a lightning arrester on the same line. Three faults on the one line during one storm, the crew finds ht first fault, fixes it, and the line still won’t stay on. They start looking again. They keep doing this until all is fixed.

July 21: A lightning storm in the area blew various fuses system wide.

July 13: A car hit a pole. It didn’t knock out the whole substation, but did affect about 400 members.

June 15: Rogers County crews were mowing and hit a guy wire breaking a pole.

May 10: A car wrecked into a pole.

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