Woodstock Village residents have been perplexed by the seemingly increased number of power outages specific to several locations apparently since the Green Mountain Power take-over of CVPS. While some localized outages in the Village may have been due to weather, it seemed that others have not had any explanation.
We asked Green Mountain Power if they could look into our “problems” and provide an explanation. Here is a detailed response from Green Mountain Power’s Jeremy Baker:
On April 7th, 2012 we had a switch fail in our underground system located in Woodstock Village. As a result we have moved some of our customers that were fed off our 83 circuit(Woodstock Village) to the 82 circuit(South Woodstock).
This is one of the primary reasons that the customers you refer to are experiencing what may be perceived as “different” outages leading to some of the confusion.
The switch that failed has not been replaced and is currently being bypassed by one phase of three serving Central St.
Our engineering department is working on a solution(s) to meet modern requirements.
This was an old switch and there are new requirements that we must meet if we decide to replace it.
In the interim we have obtained additional parts to bypass the other two phases.
In order to install these new parts, we will need to schedule an outage to the downtown portion of the business district sometime after foliage season.
However, due our ability to feed power to the neighborhood you are referring to, they will not experience these maintenance outages.
The query that we used works by picking a location and running an outage history for a specific transformer location, so we checked the specific areas mentioned in your email below and selected a location on Golf avenue (Line 73, pole 16) in order to get relative data.
Below you will find a timeline with outage information including restoration times by date.
· 04/07/2012 7: 58 am Underground switch equipment failure.
· 04/07/2012 9:50 am Power restored to the area in question except for businesses served by underground transformers on Central Street. Those businesses/residents which are served by overhead facilities from High street etc… were picked up by a system transfer. Still in service.
· 04/07/2012 1: 55 pm Remaining customers on Central Street energized.
· 06/07/2012 10.55 am Entire substation opened for a truck / pole accident Last circuit of three restored at 11: 24 AM
· 08/01/2012 11:20 am Sub transmission problem serving the area substation occurred
· 08/01/2012 9:53 pm Power restored to substation serving the Woodstock area
· 09/08/2012 11:38 am Power outage opened the 82 Circuit Breaker. 81 & 83 circuits remained in service. Area south of Central St., Hartford Hill, the Green & Church Hill out cause unknown
· 09/08/2012 2:55 pm Power restored
· 09/18/2012 6:40 pm Power off due to failure on South St. or VT route 106. 3 Spans before next protective device. Cause problem – limb on wires (weather).
· 09/18/2012 9:00 pm Power restored
· In addition we responded to calls where there was no outage on the following dates:
o 05/18/2012
o 09/24/2012
As you can see we have endured a combination of equipment failures, a car pole accident and weather related outages.
We review this information periodically and make every reasonable attempt to improve reliability based on our findings.
I would also like to add that since the merger we have increased coverage in this area from a line worker perspective due to the additional resources located in the White River and Westminster offices. This will allow us to respond to outages quicker and more efficiently.
Julia Carlisle
Woodstock Early Bird 