Although it’s only about 60 percent complete, the electrical study being conducted for the City of Gering is already paying dividends, as the consultant has found some issues at the Ballpark Substation contributing to a series of outages in the community.
Jim Herchenbach with RVW Incorporated updated the Gering Council on the issue Monday night, detailing a plan for fixes at the site tied to fuses mismatched with voltages and equipment settings.
City Electric Utilities Superintendent Doug Parker told the council part of the problem has been the substation equipment settings that were apparently put together by prior engineers who designed it. “When they come in and set it, we figure that they’re setting it correctly. But now that Jim has had the opportunity to look it over, it sounds like that they’re set too high. So that’s part of why instead of the re-closer opening up, it went to the transruptor, which caused a bigger outage,” said Parker. “The ultimate reason for the outage is still the squirrel, but instead of the squirrel being the problem, and it just seeing a blink (of power), it wanted to open the whole transruptor because of the other fuses being too big, and that reflows are not being set at a proper, at the right level.”
Jim Herchenbach with RVW said completion of the study, which will require an on-site inspection, is anticipated sometime this spring.
Parker said changing to the correct fuses, which may or may not need a planned outage, will fix much of the issue, and when the study is done, it will provide comprehensive information on the entire city system to help address future problems.
