Repairing electrical equipment in driving rain is a challenge that’s critical to reliability for customers

 

SCE Crews Weather Powerful Storm
By Casey Wian

 

Rain is falling in sheets across the street from a busy Department of Motor Vehicles office in Westminster as Southern California Edison foreman Matt Bernhardt arrives in his truck, ready to get to work. His five-man crew is assigned to  repair damaged primary connectors on a power pole  that sits at the intersection of two distribution circuits, making them abnormal.

The job can’t  wait for the rain to stop  because restoring the connection will provide critical flexibility in redirecting power load to avoid storm-related outages.

“We need options to be able to shift load around, and each circuit has limited capacity. This work is all tied to reliability for our customers,” said Scott Todd, SCE’s Huntington Beach district manager.

But the rain makes the job much tougher and presents additional safety hazards.

“We’ll be making the repairs with the line energized,” said Tim Patterson, a journeyman lineman on Bernhardt’s crew. “Normally, we would do the work using primary rubber gloves, but because of the rain, we must use our hot sticks.” Hot sticks are tools that allow lineworkers to perform a wide range of tasks while remaining a safe distance from energized equipment.

Patterson and fellow journeyman lineman Ryan Davidson are hoisted into position by an SCE bucket truck and work safely to remove the connector, which has been burned by excessive heat. They replaced it and discovered that two additional connectors at the site — though still functional — also needed to be replaced.

The repair order is completed in about an hour, including the time it takes for a traffic control contractor to put out signs and cones to keep the crew and the public safe.

To check on the status or report an outage, visit  sce.com/outagemap .