Rat causes brown out for Westend

On Tuesday, after a brief report about a recent power outage, the Wahkiakum PUD Board of Commissioners got a visit from Bonneville Power Administration representatives who spent a little time talking about forecasting and the future of BPA.

According to General Manager David Tramblie, Tuesday’s “brown out,” as some Westend customers were calling it, was caused by a large rat that had gotten a little too close to a transformer.

“We had a high side fuse open on the transformer that serves Grays River, which causes a situation which could potentially cause voltage issues,” Tramblie said. “The guys got down there as soon as they could, and working with the BPA, they were able to isolate the transformer, take the old fuses out and re-fuse them. They got everyone back on shortly after 1 a.m.”

Tramblie hopes to eventually put in circuit switchers, which, he said, would have “alleviated the longer term irregular voltage and caused the crew’s time to be considerably less, and our customers to be out for less time also.”

In other news, Tramblie shared that the PUD was planning on working with Wahkiakum County to upgrade infrastructure at the fairgrounds in Skamokawa.

“It’s something that needs to be done if the fair is going to continue to be active,” Tramblie said. “I think we need to be a participant in that.”

Scott Wilson, a Power Services Account Executive for BPA and his colleague Shelley Egerdahl, who works in forecasting, spoke at the meeting.

Egerdahl gave an overview of her work as a forecaster at BPA and spoke about how this year’s unusual weather skewed the forecast for 2015. Working with historical data, forecasters at BPA can only assume that 2016 will return to normal and that the load will remain flat.

“Every year we do a long term forecast for all the utilities,” Egerdahl said. “The information is used for things like rate setting, revenue forecasting, or planning for electrical systems. These forecasts go out 20-30 years, They are being used to determine whether we need to acquire resources in the future. There are a lot of decisions that we make off of these, so that’s why it is important for us to work with you to make sure we get the best number that we can.”

Every year, she visits the utilities to see how the actual data matches her forecasts.

“When I looked at the forecast from last year, it performed really well,” Egerdahl said. “I didn’t see any pattern that would suggest that I was missing something. We are not forecasting any growth, it’s just flat going out for the 20 year time horizon. Unless there are other things coming into the system like larger loads that you know about or loads you know are going away, from what I see, nothing justifies a change in your forecast.”

According to Wilson, BPA has begun to think about what kind of contracts they want to have in 2028.

“That’s a long ways away from here,” Wilson said. “In a world that is changing as it is, it’s good to be ahead of that and be thinking about what things we should be doing now to put us in the best place possible to have Bonneville a place that you want to be going to and not feel like you have to be going to.”