Outage goes as planned – this time
GROVE CITY —
The third time was the charm as a scheduled power outage in Grove City went as planned Sunday.
“Things went very well,” said Vance Oakes, borough manager. “We started shutdown around 5:20 (a.m.), and in two hours the power was restored.”
The borough had planned the outage for 5 to 7 a.m.; however, its engineers and Penn Power’s engineers consulted at the Park Street substation about taking extra precautions in turning off the power.
The borough had the power outage to plug in a new transformer to another transformer already on site. The new transformer replaced the borough’s third, oldest one.
On Dec. 11, the borough had an outage to unplug wiring from old transformer into its second one to prepare for the delivery of the new machine made for Grove City by General Electric.
That planned half-hour outage lasted nearly three hours, due to an unforeseen malfunction of a switch at the substation that turned off the borough’s power.
Penn Power was called in to deactivate the switch from its power source behind the substation, so the borough could manually close the switch to restore power to residents.
A second outage was planned Dec. 18 to split wiring between the new transformer and second one.
However, General Electric spent that weekend welding the new transformer, which had a small leak.
Sunday’s outage was scheduled to finish the plugin. Workers took the opportunity to clean and adjust some different switches at the substation as well, Oakes added.
The malfunctioned switch is expected to be replaced by spring or summer, he noted.
The borough is now receiving power from both transformers, at 4,160 volts.
However, it has been replacing its electrical wiring and utility pole transformers little by little for the past two years in town, which it hopes to complete by 2017 so it can turn up the energy of the two transformers to 12,000 volts to accommodate increased customer usage.
The oldest transformer could not supply more than 4,160 volts, which is why it was replaced by the newest unit that cost about $500,000 with installation.
The new transformer “is working well,” Oakes said. “We expect a representative from the General Electric factory to come and do additional testing.”
The oldest transformer is expected to be put out for bid sale next month. Besides its functional use, the transformer would be good for recycling its copper and iron components, Oakes said.
Published Jan. 11, 2012, in Allied News. Pick up a copy at 201 A Erie St., Grove City.
Article source: http://alliednews.com/local/x647575793/Outage-goes-as-planned-this-time