A fire in Beaver, Utah left customers 50 miles away in Cedar City in the dark Tuesday night.
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According to Rocky Mountain Power Spokesperson, David Eskelsen, the Sheep Rock Fire’s location threatened their equipment.He also said that the fire was at risk of burning through powerlines that impacted multiple substations. If that happened, he said, the outages could have been much worse.Rocky Mountain Power officials asserted that this controlled outage was out of an abundance of caution.
“An uncontrolled fault is much worse than a controlled outage. That’s why we take a proactive outage when a wildfire encroaches next to our equipment rather than tough it out,” Eskelsen said.“A lot of our transmission structures are made of wood poles and they can be vulnerable to dire if it’s hot enough,” he said.“The smoke from a fire can be an electric conductive. If the smoke is dense enough, it can cause a fault on the transmission line,” Eskelsen said.
Rocky Mountain Power officials are confident that the widespread controlled outage was the safest option for both their equipment and their customers. “When you’re talking about wildfire, you’re talking about a really dynamic situation that can change really quickly," Taking an outage of that size was, in the judgement of our operations personnel, the right decision in the moment.”When it comes to future controlled outages, “prior notice really can’t be given,” he said.
Controlled Outage Wildfire Equipment Powerlines Eskelsen Customers Fireproof Tree Wraps
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