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    • Inside plans to restore power after Helene
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    Inside plans to restore power after Helene

    Vaseline Posted on

    As Hurricane Helene approaches the Big Bend coastline, the city of Tallahassee is bracing for a disaster that could well eclipse Hurricanes Hermine and Michael and the May 10 tornado outbreak.

    In an interview with the Tallahassee Democrat, Tallahassee City Manager Reese Goad discusses the kind of damage he expects from Helene, how the city plans to restore power and when people can expect their air conditioners to start humming again (short answer: he’s still not sure).

    This interview has been edited for length:

    Q: Can you describe the type of grid damage you expect from Helene, given its expected intensity and trajectory?

    A: “That’s a difficult answer, to be honest. We know what types of damage to expect. We have now obviously been hit by a number of hurricanes and tropical events in the last eight years, starting with Hermine. And that damage will come in two parts: tree-related damaged structures and our electrical infrastructure. And there may be local consequences of flooding. The severity of that is difficult to gauge because I believe that if the path holds, this storm will be worse than we have seen. It may be more similar to the devastation we saw when tornadoes hit Tallahassee in May. That was a relatively compact area, but with a much more severe impact than what we have experienced in other hurricane events.”

    Q: Can you describe the damage to the infrastructure? Of course we are talking about electricity poles and lines… but what else?

    A: “Those are the most important things. That’s really where you see it go from typical damage to greater levels of destruction. It’s really at the utility pole where full trees fall and damage the poles – that’s an extraordinary difference between simply damaging a wire or breaking a wire. So if you find yourself in a situation where you have to replace posts and a bunch of wire or wire, it becomes much more time consuming, right? By comparison, you remember what we saw in May with the tornadoes. We have replaced more than 400 electricity poles.”

    Question: Wasn’t that the most ever?

    A: “That’s it. And my memory tells me it was more than all previous hurricanes combined. What you actually saw was a complete reconstruction of many circuits that served that area (affected by the tornadoes). That takes much more repair time than when it comes to a broken wire, a blown fuse, things that are typical of storms and tree-related damage.”

    Question: Then the damage from Helene would theoretically be similar to the tornado outbreak, but geographically broader?

    A: “I think that’s our fear. We are very prepared. The sources are here. The approach is solid. The question is: how great is the damage and how widespread will it be?”

    Q: Can you say how many line workers there will be from the city, the mutual aid crews and any contract workers?

    A: “We will have 2,000 utility workers, but they are all different capacities or utilities, not limited to the linemen. But on a normal day, we have 100 linemen working for the city of Tallahassee, who are at the heart of this restoration. There is a lot of support and coordination at our substations, at our power plants and our control center. Tony (Guillen), our general manager of electricity and gas, told me this morning that we had increased that by another 270. So we are approaching 400 linemen ready and available with more planned. There is a finite limit at some point in terms of how much you can scale a system. The reason for this is how dynamic the repairs need to be. When you have circuits that need to be de-energized, re-energized, there’s just a tremendous amount of communication happening with the electrical control center. You can think of that as the nerve center. So the way we scale ourselves is by deploying trained expert resources from the City of Tallahassee along with our mutual aid partners, and that would be from other utilities as well as private contractors together. There’s more to it than just the linemen, and that requires a huge support network, but also our wastewater systems, road clearing and underground utilities. So the city’s collective utilities would be about 2,000. That is with mutual aid. That’s with everyone.”

    Q: Has the city ever done a pre-storm effort like this before?

    A: “This is very similar to our level of resources before Michael.”

    Question: Which event was worse for us in terms of total failure?

    A: “My memory was that during Michael we lost 90% of our customers.”

    Q: Do you expect a similar number with Helene?

    A: “Yes, I expect it will be similar (with Michael), probably worse. If the storm continues on its current path, the destruction will be worse than Michael’s, the impact on the power grid would be greater and I would expect a similar level of outages, if not more.”

    Q: Was Michael worse than the May 10 tornado outbreak?

    A: “In terms of total customers, (Michael) was much worse. In terms of impact on the electricity grid, there was clearly more. The power grid, with the tornadoes, probably caused the most damage we’ve ever seen, but obviously it was limited to a certain area.”

    Q: What is the ground plan for power restoration?

    A: ‘We think it will be midnight… maybe early morning, hours… the first thing obviously is to assess the damage. The transmission system, often referred to as bulk delivery, is the largest wires we see. These are the transmission wires of the main corridor. We will assess that. During the tornadoes, we had a lot of impact on our transmission corridors. These are very difficult repairs, but when they are not in use, the next element of the system, a substation, is not energized. So even if your distribution network is unscathed, you won’t be able to supply electricity. So they will follow the path of how the system works, from the generation to the transmission substations, all the way to the distribution wires, which would be the wires and neighborhoods and localized areas.

    “At that point we will have good awareness based on our control center, the intelligence we have there, as well as the inspection assessment of the system, and that will allow our electrical people to make the repairs. And those repairs will be prioritized…where our hospitals are the highest priority. Our… seven nursing homes in Leon County, they are the highest priority. We have over 100 circuits in our system. If there is damage to those circuits that serve our hospitals, our nursing homes, those will be addressed first, so all necessary resources will be focused on that. And then we work through a priority list that includes other medical facilities, assisted living facilities, communications facilities and things that are critical. to the ability to communicate and provide medical care when necessary. And some of that will be concurrent as we will deploy the crews necessary to make those repairs. And then they’ll, you know, continue to work the system as they work through the priority list before any repairs happen, okay?”

    Question: If the damage is greater than Michael’s, how long would it take to restore power?

    A: “It’s hard to say. Don’t know. I think it will probably take that whole day through Saturday until we have estimates. What we have developed as good practice is to try to identify milestone levels of restoration, such as 75% restored, 90% restored. I suspect it will be Saturday when we start sharing that, because we will have a good idea of ​​the pace of repairs, the extent of the damage and things like this. The weather is forecast to be quite good this weekend, and then I think it will rain again early in the week, so that obviously matters too.”

    Question: Do customers have to report their malfunctions to Helene?

    A: “It’s a good question. It is fine for our customers to report the malfunctions. But in this case, because of the kind of damage we’re going to have, there is knowledge at the system level, and so that will be very good. So the system knows, because of the way the faults occur, which circuits fail? Customers are assigned to all these circuits. If a circuit goes down, every customer is gone. So that is known and they will repair all damage points on that circuit.”

    Contact Jeff Burlew at [email protected] or 850-599-2180.

    Vaseline
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