Colorado received record-breaking winds beginning on April 5 lasting through the majority of the weekend that caused many broken poles and trees on lines. As a result, they want to share the initial takeaways regarding extreme wind-related outages.
First of all, If they experienced an outage, thank you for the patience during this unprecedented weather event. They especially appreciate the patience of members who were without service for extended periods.
CORE’s challenging conditions
Most of CORE’s 5,000-square-mile service area had very few or no outages
They understand how difficult and frustrating even a short outage can be, which is why the dedicated line workers and other field personnel worked so hard – and through very challenging conditions – to restore service as quickly as possible.
As a member-owned, not-for-profit electric cooperative, they always focus on providing reliable power at affordable rates. Thanks to continued improvements to and increased maintenance of the grid, most of CORE’s 5,000-square-mile service area had very few or no outages.
Contract powerline construction
The bulk of the extended outages were concentrated in the mountain and foothill communities. The crews worked tirelessly – many of them through the night – to get affected members back on, and they enlisted the help of contract powerline construction and tree removal crews to speed up restoration efforts.
They want to recognize all of the men and women who worked so diligently in these potentially unsafe conditions to restore power to the communities.
Nature and scope of restoration work
The nature and scope of restoration work are much more varied in an event like this change by the minute
The grid performed well, and the crews worked very hard, but this weekend’s storm illustrated some things CORE can continue to refine, improve and build on going forward.
This includes estimated times of restoration (ETRs). Some members received fluctuating ETRs for their power outages. They rely partly on automatically generated ETRs that don’t always match the crews’ direct assessments in major events such as this. The nature and scope of restoration work are much more varied in an event like this and can change by the minute. They will re-evaluate the ETR process so that they can provide more consistent and accurate information in the future.
CORE’s alternate relay settings
They also want to be clear about the alternate relay settings they activated across the system ahead of this weekend’s extreme winds and during high fire danger. CORE’s alternate relay settings do not preemptively turn off any part of the system; they instead make the system more sensitive to potential issues, such as a tree on a line.
This increased sensitivity occasionally results in larger and longer outages. The tradeoff is that these outages help us quickly identify potential hazards and prevent wildfires. The alternate relay settings performed as expected and the equipment de-energized lines as trees fell onto them before fires could be started.
Wildfire mitigation efforts
They can learn more about the alternate relay settings and how they differ from planned outages. Additionally, CORE continues to deploy equipment that will minimize the size of some outages in the future. They can learn more about the wildfire mitigation efforts on this page.
The operations and other departments will look closely at these and other parts of the outage response so that they will be even more prepared to reliably deliver The Energy to Thrive during future adverse weather events.