The Vine Street Substation, where the outage was caused, in a file photo from October 2022.
About 7,000 customers of Pacific Power were affected by a power failure in Albany today, the utility reported on its outage website. And “wildlife” was listed as the cause.
Wildlife?
“The outage was caused by a bird which made contact with our protection and caused it to blow,” said Adam Kohler, Pacific Power’s regional business manager in the Willamette Valley.
This bird (its species was not specified) made its unfortunate contact at the Vine Street Substation, which feeds customers downtown and in North Albany.
The outage began a little after 8 a.m. and lasted in at least one neighborhood until shortly after 3. How come so long?
In an email, Kohler was kind enough to explain it to me, who knows far less than I should about how the electric grid works:
“The issue with the delay in restoration isn’t the outage itself, but rather the steps which need to be taken to restore power to all of those customers. There is a concept called ‘cold load pickup’ which takes into account the fact that you can’t suddenly add all the load on the system or the inrush of current will cause the breakers to trip again.
“Think of it like flipping your breaker back on while all of your appliances are in the on position at the same time. What will happen is your breaker will pop again, and the lights of your house will turn off again.
“To combat this, our linemen have to restore power in what we call a ‘step restoral’ process. Legs of the distribution lines are isolated, and power is restored in smaller increments.
“I believe we are also seeing a longer delay because more people are home this week due to spring break, so the power consumption is greater than it would [be] at a normal Wednesday during the day. This is requiring additional, smaller ‘steps’ to be isolated and power restored.”
Eventually, of course, the lights came on again, to the relief of everybody affected.
Outages like this remind us of the fragility of our electric power system. This should make younger people nervous about Oregon’s so-called “climate goals,” which aim to make everyone even more dependent on electric power than we already are. (hh)
Being a old power lineman, I figured there was a load pickup problem when the electricity would come on and then go off again. Thank you for checking on this and sharing what you learned..
I’m just going to throw this out there…. If we keep adding houses and apartments without upgrading our infrastructure, isn’t this type of “reset timeframe” just going to increase?
The last paragraph says it all… ‘nuff said.
Thank you for the report, Hasso. Poor bird.
Not only is the green agenda dictating that people rely on more (copper intensive) electric power, but the sources of that power should be limited to green energy, basically wind and solar, two sources which are unavailable 24/7 without adding massive amounts of batteries, which are themselves dirty to manufacture and hard / toxic to dispose. Sensible “all the above” power sourcing is the cleanest approach in the long run, including use of clean nuclear power like that provided by our local (Corvallis HQ) Nuscale Power.
Here, here. Raise of the whiskey glass to your response. Too bad there isn’t more interest in Tesla’s free energy that mysteriously disappeared upon his death. But a personal house nuclear reactor in a suitcase or back isn’t a bad idea either. Cheers
Tigard is apparently their HQ now.
And “clean” nuclear???
I thought nuclear power was voted out of Oregon in 1980? I had no idea we had a small facility in Corvallis. How did that happen? I am for all forms of green energy and think we should use a mix but I am against the use of nuclear power.
Nuclear power was not voted out in Oregon. PGE just got tired of Lloyd Marbet putting a referendum to shut the Trojan nuclear plant down every 2 years. The people voted down the referendum every 2 years but ignorant people kept signing his petition. Are you aware that the first nuclear submarine was launched in 1958 and to date nobody has died from radiation poisoning? Are you also aware that the majority of power in Oregon is produced by hydropower, which the village idiots that run this state refuse to call renewable power. Oregon also gets nuclear power from Richland and California is keeping their existing nuclear plant running even though it was supposed to be shut down. I was in Texas when freezing weather shut down wind energy and caused power shutdowns. If you stopped in a filling station and needed the bathroom, they were out of service from the freeze. If the idiots in Oregon think renewable energy will ever be the majority power source in Oregon, they are living in their usual dream land. The sources of power for Oregon are easily available using Google. It doesn’t show the cost but wind energy in the gorge is 4 times BPA power. At the same time the village idiots are trying to close dams, supposedly to protect salmon. They are trying to shut down hunting and fishing.
Today, the Carousel was supposed to be “Free Rides All Day Long” as part of our founder’s birthday. (Wendy Kirbey) Lots of people wanting to take advantage, but obviously could not. We never opened. :-(
So! Tomorrow, Thurs., March 26th will be the Free Rides All Day Long from 11am-4:00pm… Join us for the fun… :-)
Why nobody says get rid of birds who cause outage in first place. Or too obtuse?
Hasso mixes his old “gloom and doom” trick when he writes about a future he will not experience: “This should make younger people nervous about Oregon’s so-called “climate goals,” which aim to make everyone even more dependent on electric power than we already are” Hering’s jump of enormous proportion to an unsupportable conclusion cannot be accepted given the lack of evidence Hering provides..
This is Hering trying to find ANY connection to any trend that is moving away from what he believes we ought to believe no matter how specious … that the Good Old Days were the Best and the future looks grim because of what the government’s doing. This is precisely what Hering’s predecessors were saying before the arrival of electricity; that electricity was a danger to us all. One imagines that back in the Prehistoric Times, there was a local scribe that was bemoaning the discovery of fire.
Thank you, Hasso Hering, for speaking the truth, despite what people like hartman say.
Hasso writes: “This should make younger people nervous about Oregon’s so-called “climate goals,” which aim to make everyone even more dependent on electric power than we already are.”
Is Hasso suggesting we return to wood stoves and whale oil lamps so that we can build ever-larger McMansions?
You had no problem claiming to be able to read Hasso’s mind in your post. I guess it’s the hypocrisy manifesting itself again.
Oh Boy! FREE RIDES. Perhaps I will go. Thanks HH
I’m no fan of the push for unreliable green energy but I must be missing something with the last paragraph. I fail to see how that plays a role in a bird hitting a substation and causing an outage. Nor do I see how that would affect restoration of power either. Someone care to elaborate for me?
The “italicised” reply in Hasso’s story above spells it out in detail…
The italicized portion doesn’t explain why the push for ‘green energy’ would have any effect on this outage and the time to restore it. Whether the electricity is generated from coal, wind or solar it would still travel through the substation that was taken down by a bird. I fail to see out the source affects this part of the infrastructure.
How many more hours if this had been a colder than normal day? Throw in a freakish March snowstorm covering the solar panels? How many hours more?
Even if more people were home than “normal”, what’s “normal” going to be in 10 or 20 years with all the housing being built? Maybe it’s a bogus excuse and there weren’t enough “more people” home to make a meaningful difference? How did power usage compare to the areas NOT affected?
The obvious question is “Why was a bird able to access an area that would kill them and shut down the whole system?”.
As long as you are willing to pay the $$ to make all the substations impenetrable from bird-strikes, formally float your proposal to the folks that make those decisions…
We already do pay. How many fees are added to pay for unnecessary projects (underground cables for one). Common sense would dictate that preventing substation bird strikes would be a necessary project done without anyone requesting it.
You’ll have to convince them of the efficacy of doing so. Regardless. the rate payers will bear the cost of doing it…
Mr. Ray a direct quote by you “Sometimes folks need a two-by-four across the forehead to get their attention. Multiple and/or higher fines will eventually do that”. Preventing substation bird strikes are essential for improving grid reliability and avoiding significant financial penalties, with a single bird-related incident potentially costing between $15,000 and $200,000 in repairs. A bird-caused outage often lasts 2–4 hours, causing significant revenue loss and damage to equipment. How many financial and destructive consequences will the city need to be proactive rather than reactive.
The city?
Yes, the city. The Albany City Council, in conjunction with local improvement projects and utility companies like Pacific Power, approved moving power lines underground to improve infrastructure resilience. The decision involved council-authorized funding to move overhead lines underground, particularly for downtown and waterfront improvements, aimed at protecting utilities from weather damage. These projects, such as the downtown rehabilitation, are designed to enhance reliability and improve “the aesthetic appeal” of the city. Unfortunately, the substation being designed for bird strikes to improve reliability would not improve “the aesthetic appeal” of the city.
yes it was wonderful — had to throw out hundreds of dollars in food for the extended down time. Fridge can only keep most of this for 4 hours and no, never opened the door until power came back. Horrible smell of rotting food in that short amount of time. Very sad – bad timing. But was thankful to get power once it came on steady and true again.