BLUEBONNET ELECTRIC MAKING PROGRESS ON RESTORING POWER TO CUSTOMERS

  

Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative made great progress in the past 24 hours, restoring power to more than 5,300 members after powerful storms ripped through its Central Texas service area Memorial Day. At 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Bluebonnet reported 101 individual outages with 833 members still without power.

“We completely understand there are some members who have been without power for quite a while,” said Mark Rose, Bluebonnet’s general manager. “Our goal is to fully restore power to each member, but our first priority is safety. It may look like the weather has improved in their area and can’t see any reason for a prolonged outage like this one, but the source of the outage could be quite some distance – miles in some cases – away from their home.

“We have access problems getting to many locations. There are still several rain-swollen creeks and flooded fields. We’re having to use boats to reach some areas before we can even begin to restore power.”

Rose said Bluebonnet estimates it will have power fully restored to all members by noon Wednesday.

Monday’s storms brought high winds and thousands of lightning strikes, both of which caused widespread damage to Bluebonnet’s electric grid. In the western portion of the co-op’s service area, fallen trees were responsible for broken poles and cross arms and downed power lines. These outages are labor- and time-intensive. Crews often have hours of work to do clearing trees and untangling power lines before they can begin to repair the damage.

Lightning also caused extensive damage to fuses and transformers.

“We have seen an unprecedented number of damaged transformers that have to be replaced,” Rose said. “That’s a lengthy fix under the best conditions using a bucket truck. But it’s a really tough job that takes considerably longer when you have to remove and replace a transformer that weighs a few hundred pounds by climbing the pole, and doing everything by hand.”

 

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