Power failure zaps city

A major power failure last week plunged most of Clarendon into darkness and threatened the water supply for towns as far south as Crowell.

 
Workers for AEP-West Texas Utilities took down the historic WTU sign from the front of their Kearney Street office in Clarendon last week in preparation for closing the office later this month. In an unrelated incident four hours after the sign came down, the city was plunged into darkness when a AEP-WTU mobile substation failed.
Enterprise Digital Photo.
 
A mobile substation owned by AEP-West Texas Utilities (AEP-WTU) went down last Tuesday, July 18, at 6:49 p.m. Power was not restored for nearly eight hours.

A spokesman for AEP-WTU said Clarendon’s substation was undergoing routine maintenance, which involved cleaning and upgrading the transformers and insulators, when workers experienced a problem with the plant’s voltage regulator.

“The problem with the voltage regulator required immediate attention,” said Linda Caton, a communications consultant for AEP-WTU.

Workers transferred the city’s electrical load to two mobile substations to make repairs on the main substation, Caton said. A failed relay in the larger 5MW mobile substation caused the power outage.

With temperatures in the high 90s, residents quickly began feeling the effects of the outage as air-conditioners stopped all over town.

Commercial activity also died as service stations were unable to pump gas, and restaurants were unable to prepare meals.

B&R Thriftway manager Buddy James said his store has backups on the cash registers that are good for only about 20 minutes. After that, the town’s only supermarket was shut down. James said Thriftway lost some meat but other stock was not affected by the blackout.

Perhaps hardest hit was Greenbelt Municipal Water Authority, which provides water for several area towns including Clarendon and Hedley. With the power out, Greenbelt’s pumps were halted.

“The water towers in Clarendon were completely out before the power came back on,” said Greenbelt’s Bobbie Kidd. “The tower in Hedley was half empty, and the two million gallon ground storage tank east of Hedley was totally empty.”

Kidd said several miles of water pipeline to Childress were empty also.

“It affected us all the way to Crowell,” he said.

After the power came back on, Greenbelt began pumping non-stop to get caught up. Storage facilities were not filled until Sunday, Kidd said.

“We lost over nine hours of pumping time Tuesday night and had lost two hours during an outage the day before.”

Kidd said this was the second longest power failure Greenbelt Water had experienced in his 25 years with the authority. But, he said, the previous outage was in the winter, and there wasn’t a problem with running out of water.

Greenbelt has back up power only for its offices, and Kidd said purchasing a generator to run even one of the plant’s three-phase pumps is financially unfeasible.

Other back up power supplies around town kept critical functions online.

Chief Deputy Butch Blackburn said the generator at the Sheriff’s Department did get hot, but a box fan was enough to keep it running throughout the blackout.

GTE’s switching station has battery backups that power the city’s phones. Bob Curtis, a spokesman with GTE, said the company did have a generator in Memphis ready to move if it had been required.  However, the batteries still had several hours of power when the electricity came back on, he said.

Donley County Hospital District Administrator Alan Graham said the emergency generator at the Medical Center Nursing Home never missed a beat. The diesel-fueled generator provided priority power to critical systems without any problems.

A new backup generator that powers the countywide repeater tower also kicked in.  The repeater tower provides communications among local law enforcement, fire department, and emergency medical personnel.

The tower’s generator did “sound funny,” according to Graham. But it carried the load during the outage just fine.

“Emergency personnel were never out of communication,” he said.

Graham said the tower generator was disconnected over the weekend so it could be recalibrated but that it was back online by Monday afternoon.

Caton said AEP-WTU crewmen worked diligently to bring the city’s substation back online. Ten transmission service techs and three distribution service techs were in town working on the problem. Five dispatchers in Abilene were on the job also.

Power was restored at 2:34 a.m. Wednesday.

A smaller 3.75 MW mobile substation continued to operated normally during the outage and kept the lights on in parts of the north and east sides of town.