Inside plans to restore power after Helene

As Hurricane Helene barrels toward the Big Bend coast, the city of Tallahassee is bracing for a disaster that may dwarf Hurricanes Hermine and Michael and the May 10 tornado outbreak.

In an interview with the Tallahassee Democrat, Tallahassee City Manager Reese Goad talks about the type of damage he expects from Helene, how the city plans to restore power and when people can expect their air conditioners to hum again (short answer: He is…). not sure yet).

This interview has been shortened for length:

Q: Can you describe the type of damage to the power grid that you expect to occur given the predicted intensity and path of Helene?

A: “That’s a difficult answer, to be honest. We know what damage we have to expect. Obviously we have been affected by a number of hurricanes and tropical events over the last eight years, starting with Hermine. And this damage will occur in two parts: tree-related damaged structures and our electrical infrastructure. And there could be localized flooding impacts. The severity of this is difficult to estimate because I believe that if the path continues, this storm will be worse than we have seen so far. It may be more comparable to the destruction we saw where the tornadoes hit Tallahassee in May. This was a relatively compact area, but the impacts were much more severe than other hurricane events.”

Q: Can you describe the infrastructure damage? Obviously these are power poles and lines… but what else?

A: “Those are the most important things. Here you can really see that it goes from the typical damage to a greater level of destruction. It's really at the utility pole where full trees fall and damage the poles – that's an extraordinary difference between just damaging a cable or breaking a cable. So if you get into a situation where you have to replace rods and a lot of pipes or wires, that becomes a lot more time consuming, right? Well, in comparison, you probably remember what we saw in May with the tornadoes. We replaced over 400 utility poles.”

Q: Wasn't that the highest thing ever?

A: “It was. And my memory tells me it was more than all the previous hurricanes combined. What you really saw was a complete reconstruction of many of the routes that serve this (tornado-hit) area. The repairs take a lot more time as if it were a broken cable, a blown fuse, things that are typical in storms or tree damage.”

Q: Then the damage from Helene would theoretically be similar to the tornado outbreak, but geographically larger?

A: “I think that’s our fear. We are well prepared. The resources can be found here. The approach is solid. The question is, how big is the damage and how extensive will it be?”

Q: Can you say how many city line workers, support staff and any contract workers will be present?

A: “We'll have 2,000 utility workers – but that's across a wide range of capacities and utilities, not just line workers.” But on a typical day we have 100 linemen working for the city of Tallahassee, which is the focus of this restoration. There is a lot of support and coordination in our substations, in our power plants and in our control center. Tony (Guillen), our general manager of electricity and gas, told me this morning that we have increased the number by another 270. So we're approaching 400 linemen ready and available, with more planned. At some point there is a finite limit to how much a system can scale. The reason is how dynamic the repairs have to be. When circuits need to be shut down and re-energized, there is simply a tremendous amount of communication with the electrical control center. You can think of it as a nerve center. The way we scale is by leveraging the resources of trained professionals from the City of Tallahassee, along with our mutual aid partners, from other utilities as well as private contractors. It's about more than just the road wardens, and that requires a huge support network, but also our wastewater systems and our street cleaning and underground utilities. So the total utility of the city would be about 2,000. This is with mutual help. It’s like that for everyone.”

Q: Has the city ever taken a precautionary measure like this before?

A: “This is very, very similar to our resource level before Michael.”

Q: Which event was worse for us in terms of total outages?

A: “I remember during Michael we lost 90% of our customers.”

Q: Do you expect a similar number for Helene?

A: “Yes, I expect it will be similar (to Michael), probably even worse. If the storm continues on its current path, the destruction will be worse than Michael, the impact on the power grid would be greater and I would expect a similar level of outages, if not more.”

Q: Was Michael worse than the May 10 tornado outbreak?

A: “In terms of the total number of customers, (Michael) was far worse. When it comes to the impact on the power grid, the impact was obviously greater. The power grid caused probably the most damage we've ever seen with the tornadoes, but the damage was obviously limited to a specific area.”

Q: What is the floor plan for restoring power?

A: “We expect it to be midnight…maybe early morning, hours…The first thing we need to do, of course, is to assess the damage. The transmission system, often referred to as bulk delivery, are the largest lines we see. These are the transmission cables for your large corridor. We will judge that. During the tornadoes, we had a major impact on our transmission corridors. These are very difficult repairs, but when they are not operational, the next element of the system, a substation, is not energized. Even if your distribution network is intact, you cannot supply electricity. So you follow the path of how the system works, from generation to the substations to the distribution lines, i.e. the lines, neighborhoods and demarcated areas.

“At this point we have good awareness based on our control center, the information we have there and the inspection assessment of the system, and that will allow our electricians to initiate the repairs. And these repairs are a priority.” …where our hospitals are the highest priority. We have over 100 circuits in our nursing home system, these will be addressed first, so all necessary resources will be directed towards those. Then we work our way through a priority list that includes other medical facilities, assisted living facilities, communications facilities, things that are critical to the ability to communicate and provide medical care when needed, and some of that will be done at the same time because we The teams required to make these repairs will deploy the system while they work through the priority list before repairs, okay?”

Q: If the damage is worse than Michael's, how long would it take to restore power?

A: “That's hard to say. I don't know. I'm guessing it will probably take all day until Saturday before we have estimates. What we've developed as a best practice is trying to identify milestone levels of recovery, like 75% recovered, 90% recovered. I guess it will be Saturday when we start sharing this because we'll have a good handle on the pace of repairs, the extent of the damage and things like that. The weather is expected to be pretty good over the weekend and then I think it will rain again at the start of the week, so of course that’s important too.”

Q: Do customers have to report their outages to Helene?

A: “That's a good question. It is completely okay for our customers to report the outages. However, in this case, because of the nature of the damage we will suffer, there is system-level knowledge and that is really good. So because of the way the outages occur, the system knows which circuits are down. Customers are assigned to all of these circuits. If a circuit goes out, every customer is out. So that is known and they will repair all the damage points on this route.”

Contact Jeff Burlew at [email protected] or 850-599-2180.

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