By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
The Flood of ‘14 brought some significant challenges to utility operators over the past week. Work crews scrambled to keep electrical systems running and to restore essential services to local residents who were experiencing outages.
One of the facilities hardest hit by the September 8 event was the Reid Gardner Generating Station in Moapa. Plant operators scrambled to take generation at the water-logged plant offline during the severe rain on Monday afternoon. NV Energy work crews and contractors are currently still working on cleaning up, testing components and preparing to get the plant up and running again, safely.
The plant, which was near the epicenter of that Monday’s huge storm, received about 4 inches of rain within a two hour period of time. It then fell in the direct path of the ensuing flood waters that rushed down the Muddy River.
Of course, that kind of weather doesn’t go too well with high voltage electricity production, said Plant Supervisor Todd Robison in an interview with the PROGRESS last week.
“For us at the plant this was actually two events,” Robison said. “The massive rainstorm that we had was an event in itself. Our equipment is set up to handle a moderate rainfall. But when you get that much rain all at once, it is beyond what you can protect yourself from. That kind of water soaks your equipment and runs into places where you just don’t want it to go. And then just as we were getting ready to deal with that, I look up and see a wall of flood water coming downstream from the (Paiute) reservation.”
Much of the plant ended up under water and there was mud in everything, Robison said. But the flood stopped short of causing any major environmental damage. The plant’s settling ponds, lined and protected by high earthen dikes, remained sound and secure despite the flood water. In addition, the plant’s landfill sits on the desert mesa above the plant, well away from the river flow. There was no sign that either of these had been compromised or that contaminants had been released into the water or the surrounding area, Robison said.
It was that initial heavy rain that brought about the early decision to shut down the plant.
“When we knew that it could potentially cause some severe damage over here, we called our system operator and notified them that our intent was to put Reid Gardner in the dark,” Robison said.
That meant to go through the complicated process of completely and safely removing the plant from service.
But just as they were preparing to do that, something in the transmission system to the Overton Power District (OPD) line failed. That was at a little after 3:00 p.m. It put all OPD customers in Moapa Valley and Mesquite; as well as Lincoln County Power District customers; out of service. This was estimated to be approximately 20,000 customers, according to an OPD statement last week.
OPD’s power resources are not generated at Reid Gardner plant. Rather, the OPD has it’s own purchase power agreements from various suppliers and it receives a portion of Hoover Dam hydro power to serve its customers.
But OPD is still dependent upon the Reid Gardner facility for delivery of its power. A large substation at Reid Gardner is the single conduit that supplies those resources. From there the power runs through a 230 kilovolt transmission line to OPD’s Tortoise Substation located nearby. The Tortoise substation also supplies power to Lincoln County customers.
Previous to the outage, the efforts at Reid Gardner had been centered solely around protecting the plant equipment, Robison said. But the outage added a new facet to that focus.
In addition, as a short time passed on the outage the substation and switchyard at Reid Gardner was becoming increasingly inundated with flood water. Water rose to approximately five feet deep in some parts of the substation.
Soon after that, plant officials met together on a NV Energy emergency response conference call which brought key players in the company together to manage the disaster. Also on the call was Kevin Geraghty, Vice President of Energy Supply for NV Energy. In that call, the subject of the OPD outage came up.
“He (Geraghty) was not aware that we were the sole conduit to provide them (OPD) with electrical current over there,” said Reid Gardner Maintenance Manager, Jason Hammons who was on the conference call. “On the phone call he said that they may not be our customers, but we need to treat them like they are our customers. We need to do everything that we can to help those people.”
Because of that, the action level at the plant was elevated. And the area of focus at the plant broadened to include the OPD territory, Hammons said.
During that time, OPD crews had been out inspecting their transmission system to verify that the system was still fully intact. Once they had done that, they worked with NV Energy crews and Lincoln County Power District personnel, to restore power to a limited area by using an old, little used, transmission line. The old 69 kilovolt line, which once was used to bring Hoover Dam power down from the old Sheep Mountain switch near Coyote
Springs, is limited in the load it can carry. It couldn’t supply power to the entire district territory. But it could be used to re-energize areas of Moapa and Glendale and to bring power back to the Tortoise Substation for work crews.
Meanwhile, NV Energy teams were hard at work on developing solutions to the problems at the Reid Gardner substation and switchyard. In that process, Robison came in contact with an old friend who worked as a transmission operator for the company. Working over the telephone together, they plotted out a plan where they might be able to get things up and running again.
“It was a long and detailed process, but we were eventually able to isolate the plant from the switchyard,” Robison said. “So now the question is: Will the switchyard actually function? In the end, part of it did and part of it didn’t. But it was enough that we were able to power up tortoise again.”
That was at about 10:30 p.m. And once that was done, OPD crews could begin to go through the process of systematically bringing their grid back up again.
According to OPD General Manager Mendis Cooper, most of the OPD customers were back in power by shortly after 11:00. At that point, there were a few isolated areas where the district had fuses down and crews were dispatched to quickly repair them. All OPD customers were back up again by 12:50 a.m., Cooper said.
Cooper added that he was grateful for the coordinated effort made by the three utilities to get power back on.
“We appreciate those relationships with neighboring entities,” Cooper said. “It couldn’t be done without a team effort.”
Cooper especially mentioned the NV Energy crews. “They really went to bat for us over there,” he said. “They had things of their own to fix. But we stayed on their radar and were always in the queue. Their management did a great job of helping us out.”
As of the end of last week, crews at Reid Gardner were still going through slowly and methodically testing all systems to prepare to bring the plant online again. They were unsure of when that would take place, but estimated sometime in the next week or two.
“We are just walking through each system and taking our time,” Jason Hammons said. “We want to make sure that when we bring those units up, everything is good.”
Throughout the process, safety has been the primary consideration, Hammons emphasized.
“I told everyone here on site that I would consider the recovery effort a failure if anyone gets hurt,” he said. “Obviously, the systems and physical assets are important; but safety is number 1.”
Hammons said that he was proud of the way the plant employees had handled themselves during the crisis.
“Everyone did a great job of handling the situation, taking care of each other and the equipment,” he said. “It’s something that you don’t want to go through. But in the heat of the moment, you just get things done. And that’s what they did.”
