Anderson Island Residents Urged To Conserve Power Use While Cooperative Works To Diagnose Cause Of Major Outage and Implement Repairs
North Bend, WASHINGTON February 6, 2009
– Anderson Island residents relying exclusively on a pair of large generators to supply their power this week are being urged to reduce consumption as much as possible in order to prevent blackouts while Tanner Electric Cooperative works to repair their permanent electrical supply.
The cause of Saturday morning’s complete interruption of service to the island is still as-of-yet undetermined, but Cooperative personnel are working as quickly, thoroughly and safely as possible to identify the problem and make the appropriate repairs, said Tanner Electric General Manager Steven W. Walter.
Nearly 1,000 full-time residents on the island have been affected by the outage, which was first reported as early as 4:30 a.m. on Saturday, Jan. 31. By Monday, utility service had been restored to about half of Tanner Electric’s customer base. Full power was restored by Wednesday evening, Feb. 4.
“This major power outage has been a hardship for most everyone in our island community, but I appreciate the way our residents have responded in a spirit of cooperation and patience. They realize that, since we are a cooperative and this is their business, too, that we are all in this together. I am asking for everyone’s continued understanding as we work to resolve this challenging situation,” Walter said.
While crews continue work to diagnose the problem along the “submarine” cable line which supplies electrical service from the mainland to the island, residents can do their part by reducing their own draw on an already-strained system.
Tanner Electric also held community meetings on Anderson Island on February 4th to update members on ways to conserve energy during the time that the island is powered by the diesel generators. Tanner Electric also provided over 1,500 compact fluorescence lights (CFL’s) to members.
“If everyone could be conscious of conserving their power usage, particularly between the peak times of 7-9 a.m. and 5-10 p.m. on weekdays, as well as from 7-10 p.m. on weekend days, that will go a long way toward keeping the strain down on the diesel generators we are using on the island,” Walter said. “Overloading the generators could cause them to shut down, which would be another setback we could do without,” he added.
Together, the generators produce 3,500 Kwh (enough to keep the island up and running at conservative levels) but they are being considered a very short-term bandage at best. That’s because operating the machinery around the clock will cost an estimated $400,000 per month – an expenditure Cooperative members didn’t foresee.
As long as the generators are in service, Tanner Electric will not only have to redirect personnel to provide maintenance on the machinery every 10 days, the process might also result in temporary blackouts, although Walter said those outages would be scheduled during the lightest usage periods possible.
In the meantime, Tanner Electric has contracted with the engineering firm of Hittle and Associates, the company who handled the McNeil Island submarine cable repair. Representatives estimate it will take 10 days to identify the nature of the problem, but repairs could take up to two months and it is unknown how much those fixes will cost, Walter said.
Please stay tuned to www.tannerelectric.coop for updates on the situation as it develops.
Back to Anderson Island Updates
