Utilities prepare for more outages as winter comes early - WCAX

Utilities prepare for more outages as winter comes early

EAST MONTPELIER, Vt. (WCAX) - A few dozen people were still without power Wednesday morning after wet, heavy snow Monday morning -- the second big storm to hit the region in as many weeks. It’s safe to say winter came early this year.

When the lights go out, utility employees clock in.

“Of the six major wet snow storms since 2009, three have happened in the last 13 months,” said Louis Porter with the Washington Electric Co-op.

Porter says all 14 employees have been working around the clock since Thanksgiving to restore different parts of their 1,300 miles of power lines. That’s when an unexpected heavy wet snowstorm hit much of Central Vermont. More winter weather this week meant lights out again for thousands of households.

At the Vermont Electic Co-Op, Chief Operating Officer Peter Rossi says they usually prepare for the damaging heavy wet snow in late fall and early spring. But with wacky weather becoming more common, he says they’re learning to expect the unexpected. “It’s kind of a nonstop preparation. I wouldn’t say that this winter is going to be any more or less worse than other winters, but when we look at the floods that we just had this summer -- that really didn’t affect our outages but we still were in the incident command mode,” said Rossi.

As utilities navigate more damaging and subsequently more costly storms, they’ve also worked around supply chain issues since the pandemic, although they have improved. At Washington Electric, Porter says the utility pole shortage has subsided and the transformer shortage is easing up as well. But they still need to have enough to fix an outage, noting the 40 poles that broke during last year’s Christmas storm. “We make sure that we’ve gotten enough reserves for us to restore power. That can sometimes be frustrating for members who want to get connected, save a new service, or upgrade the size of their transformer. We can’t always accommodate those requests right away because we need to keep that stock in store enough for a big outage,” said Porter.

At Vermont Electric, their future concerns are charged by delays in bucket trucks. “Larger bucket trucks can be anywhere from three to four years out, and so we do have two larger bucket trucks that are getting on the older side and we’re not expected to have the replacements that were purchased in 2022 until mid-next year, and so that has had an impact. But as far as getting the lights and the power back on this winter -- should be fine,” said Rossi.

Both co-ops say batteries and generators are a good thing to have. They also urge customers to keep food stocked and consider a secondary heat source.

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