Electric Co-op Today

Co-ops in the Rockies ensured the power stayed on for Super Bowl Sunday this year. As the first major snow storm of 2012 pushed out of the mountains and across the High Plains, line crews mobilized to restore power in parts of Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas.

Donald clears snow from his driveway following a winter storm in Arvada, Colo., Feb. 3. (Photo By: Associated Press/The Denver Post, Joe Amon)

The weather system dumped more than two feet of snow over portions of Colorado’s eastern slope Feb. 2-3 before stalling near the Nebraska-Kansas state line early Saturday.

“We got heavy snow and a lot of wind,” said Calvin Dahlkoetter, operations manager at Midwest Electric Cooperative Corp. “Lines started building up with snow around 9 a.m. and continued until around 12:30 that night.”

The Grant, Neb.-based co-op dispatched crews to restore service to about 900 of its 6,100 meters. Co-op crews were still restoring service to scattered irrigation taps Feb. 6.

Co-ops in the region that reported outages said many of the problems occurred when lines heavily laden with wet snow were buffeted by gusty winds. As the stretched wires collided with adjacent lines, fuses were blown and in some cases, insulators burned.

Beatrice, Neb.-based Norris Public Power District restored service to about 1,500 of its members Feb. 4-5, said Andrea Schafer, manager of public relations and economic development. “Public power district crews had all connections energized by late Sunday afternoon.”

“Tri-State Generation and Transmission reported no storm-related system issues,” said Jim Van Someren, communications manager of the Denver-based G&T. “Although Denver and the surrounding area received more than a foot of snow, our mountain locations were not hit as hard by ice and snow.”

While the storm spawned some of the worst weather of the season, many co-op officials accustomed to seeing their systems take winter poundings from snow, ice and high winds saw little or no weather-related damage.

“We really didn’t have any problems,” said Heidi Storz, marketing and communications director of Brighton, Colo.-based United Power. “We got more than two feet of snow in our mountain territory, but we didn’t have any outages.”

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Tags: Lineworkers, Power Outages, Winter Storm