Storm Recap May 9-12, 2024

Above: SDCEA’s Working Foreman’s truck during the storm.

In a powerful display of nature’s force, a severe storm swept through our five-county service territory from May 9-12, leaving a trail of significant impacts in its wake. This weather phenomenon hit the hardest in Custer, Fremont, and parts of Chaffee counties before moving on to Lake County. It distinguished itself as one of the most extensive and severe storms SDCEA’s staff has witnessed in the last two decades.

Overview of the Storm

The storm began late on Thursday night, with the worst of its impact felt by Friday morning. More than 4,000 consumers were reported without power at the peak of the outages, although this number might be underestimated due to a malfunction with the cooperative’s Outage Management System (OMS). Our Star Link connection, used for communication with meters in Custer and Fremont counties, was disrupted, complicating our real-time tracking and response.

Outages occurred for some members for minutes, for others – several days.

Causes of the Outages

The primary culprits for the widespread outages were heavy snow and high winds, which caused damage to our infrastructure.

Snow Accumulation: The weight of the heavy snow caused overhead lines to sag, slap and/or cross. Sometimes this breaks the wire, which needs to be replaced, a time-consuming process. In other cases, it tripped OCRs and line fuses that then needed inspection before re-energizing.

Wind Damage: Strong winds and accumulated snow caused lines to break and inflicted damage on crossarms and other pole equipment such as transformers and insulators.

SDCEA relies on Black Hills and Xcel Energy transmission and distribution lines to provide power to our substations for SDCEA to then distribute throughout our service territory. In the case of the May storm, the Black Hills 69kv transmission line into Custer County was damaged, as was SDCEA’s transmission line. Those lines needed repair before power could be restored to numerous people on our system.

 

Restoration Efforts

Despite the challenges, our crews worked tirelessly to restore power using a structured restoration process:

• Restore Transmission Lines: Priority was given to transmission lines like the 69kv line into Custer County.
• Restore Substations: Ensuring substations are operational is crucial to convert transmission level power to deliverable power throughout our service territory.
• Restore Substation Feeders: These feeders distribute power from substations to service territory areas outside of the substation, such as subdivisions and community areas.
• Restore Taps from Feeders: These are smaller lines branching out from feeders to specific areas.
• Restore Individual Services: The last step is restoring power to individual homes and businesses.

Given the severity of the situation in Custer and Fremont counties, we deployed more personnel to these areas than elsewhere. We also called in additional help from two contract line crews to expedite the restoration process.

 

Safety and Support

Our crews, working under challenging conditions, adhered to strict safety protocols mandated by OSHA standards. This ensured that they could perform their duties effectively while safeguarding their well-being. This also includes mandatory breaks to eat, change equipment and rest. We are proud to report that there were no injuries among our repair crews during this period.

 

Why isn’t information on restoration times more specific?

It is difficult to predict exactly how long it will take for an outage to be restored. Many variables go in to how long it will take to restore power.

It is rare when a crew needs to simply drive to a line and make a quick repair. Much of our system is rural. Your location affects the time it takes to get power restored. If you live in a rural area, it might take SDCEA crews an hour or more just to arrive on location (especially if they need to leave their home in the middle of the night). Then, the crew or crews need to inspect the equipment, determine the cause, and develop a plan to restore power safely. Sometimes members call within a few minutes of their power going out wondering when it will be back on. In reality, our crews have not had a chance to arrive on the scene yet, let alone find out what’s causing the problem.

We cannot access all our lines and equipment by truck. Often, crews need to hike or snowshoe in or trailer in a snowmobile or UTV to access the location of an issue. Crews working on an outage away from their work vehicle may need to pack in 70 or so pounds of equipment such as climbing and hand tools, a hoist, chainsaw, grips, splices, and chaps.

Removing a branch from a line is quick and relatively simple.

Replacing a broken power pole or digging up the buried cable to find and repair a fault is a much longer process, often several hours.

Outages can last from minutes to hours, even days depending on the severity of a storm or other event.

SDCEA relies on Black Hills and Xcel Energy transmission and distribution lines to provide power to our substations for SDCEA to then distribute throughout our service territory. If there is an issue on these lines, these providers must restore power before we can work on our lines.

Something you can rely on is, though often facing hazardous weather conditions and working through the night, SDCEA crews do everything they can to restore power as quickly and safely as possible. It is a vital job, one that our crews take very seriously.

 

Continuous Improvement

A major storm like this one is not included in SDCEA’s overall reliability statistics. This is because extreme events are excluded from those numbers since major storms can cause failures even in the best systems. Therefore, they do not provide useful information for measuring the overall reliability of SDCEA’s system.

Post-storm, we have conducted a thorough review of our response. This includes evaluating the performance of both our office and field personnel to identify areas for improvement and ensure even better preparedness for future events.

A key part of SDCEA’s dedication to enhancing reliability and resilience during storms is our work plan. The work plan, approved by the board of directors in December 2022 includes close to $27 million over the next six years to help fund infrastructure improvements, such as line and equipment upgrades and replacements.

We extend our heartfelt appreciation to all our customers for their patience, support, and understanding during this very challenging storm.

If you have further questions, please contact us at 844-395-2412. Thank you for your continued trust in our services.