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COMMITMENT VVEC Outage Restoration By Randy Riddle, Manager of Operations & Technical Services


After hours, VVEC has four line- men on trouble call each and ev- ery evening, week-end or holiday. There are two in the north part of our system and two in the south part. These linemen can call out help at any time if they get more work than they can handle. When dispatch receives a call, they con- tact the lead lineman for the area. This lineman contacts the other lineman and either picks him up or determines a place to meet based on where the outage is located. If the outage is a single outage they can proceed directly to the member that called in the trouble. However, if there are multiple calls, the crew has to determine by the location of the calls, which piece of protective equipment has opened up causing the outage, and go to that location. They will look at the equipment (either a breaker or a fuse) and de- termine if that piece of equipment is actually what is opened. When they locate the device that is opened they can begin to look into what has caused the device to open. Our distribution system is set up with multiple breakers (similar in principle to the breakers in your house, where you have a large main breaker, then smaller circuit break- ers). However the breakers on a


high voltage distribution system have to interrupt much higher volt- ages and current in the event of a fault. We have a large breaker in the substation, followed by smaller breakers out on the lines and taps as well as fuses for the smaller taps and lines. The crew must look the line over


from the open device downstream to try and determine what opened it and also make sure there is no line or pole down that could be a haz- ard if the line became re-energized. Sometimes there could be miles of line to inspect; portions of it could be in back yards or cutting across country making it inaccessible to trucks during storms and inclem- ent weather. If a problem can be found that is easily visible, it can be repaired and the outage restored in a short time. Many times a piece of equipment, like a transformer or other types of equipment, may be faulted internally and is not readily visible. If the crew determines there are no visible hazards, they must hang fault indicators on the conduc- tors then go back to the device that is open and turn it back on. If the fault is still on the line they look for a flash in the sky (if it is dark) or they will have to go look at the indica- tors to try and pinpoint the faulted


equipment or line. They may have to move these indicators several times to locate the fault. The more transformers or other pieces of equipment that are on the line, the longer it will take to find the faulted equipment and get it repaired and power restored. Walking through cross-country right-of-ways or through back yards at 2 AM can be very time consuming and difficult. Then when you find the problem and it happens to be in one of the cross country right-of-ways or in a back yard, trying to get the equip- ment to the location to make the repairs can be even more difficult. When repairs are complete, the power is turned back on. In the event that the repairs are being made after a storm, the crew hopes that this is the only problem on the line and it stays on. Many times after a storm has gone through an area, a crew may work an hour cut- ting a big tree off a line or putting up a piece of broken wire and try to energize the line only to find the breaker will not hold because there is another problem down the line. The maintenance crews at VVEC have a lot of experience with the median experience for our Lead maintenance lineman being almost 30 years and the overall median experience level of the maintenance department at almost 20 years. With that much experience, one would think that they had seen it all. There are in fact, a lot of similari- ties in some outages, then, there are some that are new to everyone. There are many variables involved..


July 2015 VVEC Power Circuit 3


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