BONNEVILLE POWER ADMINISTRATION
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
CONTACT: Doug Johnson, BPA, 503-713-7658 cell
Scott Simms, BPA, 503-230-3520
Katie Pruder, BPA 503- 230-3111
BPA media line, 503-230-5131
BPA restores service to all but 1 Northwest utility
December storm damages 71 BPA line sections, all but 10 restored
PORTLAND, Ore. - Bonneville Power Administration crews worked through the night and have now restored service to all but one Northwest utility, the Pacific County Public Utility District, in Raymond, Wash.
BPA crews are on the ground in the Raymond/Cosmopolis areas, assessing storm damage and beginning repairs. Crews were unable to complete aerial and ground reconnaissance yesterday due to continued high winds, mudslides, flooding and fallen trees. BPA will begin aerial reconnaissance of these areas as soon as weather conditions improve.
"Once we have a good survey, we can better estimate when we will get power flowing back into these areas," said Robin Furrer, BPA transmission field services vice president.
At the height of storm damage, BPA reported 71 outages on transmission lines and line sections. As of this morning, BPA had restored all but 10.
"During an outage event, our primary focus is always to restore power where lights are out. Once we have power flowing to our utility customers, we can begin restoring our backup lines," said Furrer. "We typically have multiple transmission feeds into a community, which means that even with outages, we can send power along a redundant or back up route."
Since BPA operates the high-voltage transmission lines serving Northwest utilities, it is important to note that the delivery of power to local communities depends on each individual utility's ability to deliver the power transmitted by BPA.
BPA is a not-for-profit federal electric utility that markets more than a third of the electricity consumed in the Pacific Northwest. The power is produced at 31 federal dams and one nuclear plant in the Northwest and is sold to more than 140 Northwest utilities. BPA operates a high-voltage transmission grid comprising more than 15,000 miles of lines and associated substations in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana.
###
printer friendly