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Southwest EPA station move boosts ability to beat the heat
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| By: THERESE APEL, DAILY LEADER Staff Writer |
June 23, 2009 |
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After a February fire knocked out a transformer at Southwest Mississippi Electric Power Company's Brookhaven Substation on Highway 550, officials are bringing in more backup to better help customers combat the scorching summer heat.
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Southwest Engineering Manager Kevin Bonds said Southwest officials have been monitoring the load on the mobile substation that was put in after the fire earlier this year, a job that was extra important since the transformer that was lost in the fire was a 20 megavolt ampere (MVA) unit. The mobile unit brought in to temporarily replace it only accommodates half the capacity.
The extra eye on the system paid off when summer heat skyrocketed early and caused an increase on the loads on the units. Officials decided to take the proactive measure of putting a new mobile unit in the Loyd Star Substation, which is farther west on the highway than the Brookhaven Substation.
"We weren't anticipating 99 degree temperatures this early in the year," Bonds said, explaining that hotter temperatures prompt customers to turn up their air conditioners. "This is a preventative measure."
Southwest Public Relations Director Azalea Knight said the move will also stabilize the system once again.
"We're doing this for reliability for our member customers," she said. "We're being proactive for our members, and the need arises out of the fire we had, but also the unusually early heat this summer."
Bonds said the addition of the new mobile substation actually brings the local system back up to its original capacity. He said while the system was able to handle working on less MVAs, it did have some consequences.
"You had more circuits tied together to function, so when you had outages, they'd affect more people," he said.
And while the process has been ongoing to get the transformers fixed and back up to normal speed, Bonds said he's been getting feedback on arrival times for the parts, and it looks like the permanent fixtures won't even arrive until possibly sometime in September.
He said one of the units that was damaged is being worked on in Jordan, Minn., and the other one is on site. But measures have been taken to make sure that fully restoring permanent capacity to the system is done as quickly as possible, Bonds said.
"One of the factors we looked at when we did the bid process was turnaround," he said.
Bonds and Knight said under normal circumstances the Loyd Star Substation covers a large portion of the west part of the county and into Franklin County. The Brookhaven Substation covers parts of Brookhaven, including several businesses on Brookway Boulevard.
The mobile substation will stay in Loyd Star until the power load drops off at the end of the summer, Bonds said.
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©The Daily Leader 2009
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