A handful of power outages occurred in 2009 as a result of equipment failures at Hannibal’s Indian Mounds substation. On Monday, a power outage happened when a protective device at the substation worked just as it is designed to.
“The transformer has got a switch to protect itself. If it sees an ‘over-current’ it goes ahead and opens up. The animal was so close, it saw an ‘over-current’ and it opened up,” said Jared Stewart, electric line superintendent for the BPW. “It did what it was supposed to do.”
Stewart reports that a squirrel came in contact with a 34,500 volt line within a few spans of the substation, causing it to cut power.
The BPW, which has been making upgrades at the city’s oldest substation, could do little to prevent Monday’s 19-minute outage, according to Stewart.
“We can’t do anything about the animals,” he said.
Frequently, if an outage originates at a substation, workers will try to restart the substation one time. If that attempt fails, the BPW will begin the process of back-feeding power into the impacted area from other substations in an effort to restore power to customers. After electrical service is restored, workers will then shift their focus back to determining the outage’s cause. On Monday, the Indian Mounds substation returned to service on the first try, said Stewart.
“This time they knew there was something in the line close by,” he said.
The blackout, which began at 1:20 p.m., covered an area from U.S. 61 to Paris Gravel Road and to the Clear Creek bridge. Stewart estimated the outage impacted “several hundred” customers.
Among the areas without electricity was the intersection at U.S. 61 and Route 168. A spokesman with the Hannibal Police Department reports no traffic accidents happened at that busy intersection, or elsewhere in the darkened area, during the power outage.
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A handful of power outages occurred in 2009 as a result of equipment failures at Hannibal’s Indian Mounds substation. On Monday, a power outage happened when a protective device at the substation worked just as it is designed to.
“The transformer has got a switch to protect itself. If it sees an ‘over-current’ it goes ahead and opens up. The animal was so close, it saw an ‘over-current’ and it opened up,” said Jared Stewart, electric line superintendent for the BPW. “It did what it was supposed to do.”
Stewart reports that a squirrel came in contact with a 34,500 volt line within a few spans of the substation, causing it to cut power.
The BPW, which has been making upgrades at the city’s oldest substation, could do little to prevent Monday’s 19-minute outage, according to Stewart.
“We can’t do anything about the animals,” he said.
Frequently, if an outage originates at a substation, workers will try to restart the substation one time. If that attempt fails, the BPW will begin the process of back-feeding power into the impacted area from other substations in an effort to restore power to customers. After electrical service is restored, workers will then shift their focus back to determining the outage’s cause. On Monday, the Indian Mounds substation returned to service on the first try, said Stewart.
“This time they knew there was something in the line close by,” he said.
The blackout, which began at 1:20 p.m., covered an area from U.S. 61 to Paris Gravel Road and to the Clear Creek bridge. Stewart estimated the outage impacted “several hundred” customers.
Among the areas without electricity was the intersection at U.S. 61 and Route 168. A spokesman with the Hannibal Police Department reports no traffic accidents happened at that busy intersection, or elsewhere in the darkened area, during the power outage.
