Albemarle Electric Membership Corporation recently conducted two planned outages in Chowan County to make emergency repairs to the Edenton Substation.
The porcelain insulators on two switches were damaged due to a bird’s nest. When the damage was discovered, a plan was immediately put in place to replace the damaged switches.
“These switches had to be replaced as soon as possible,” said Manager of Engineering Kevin Heath. “If they had failed, we could have been looking at about a five-hour outage that could have taken place at any time.”
The work was performed in two stages. The first outage was planned for 1:30 p.m. to remove the jumpers from the damaged switches. The duration of the first outage was less than 10 minutes. The second outage was planned for 3:45 p.m. and lasted about an hour.
“We planned both outages to take place during the day, because our linemen could work safer and faster,” said Albemarle EMC General Manager Gary Ray. “When emergency repairs must be conducted, considerable thought goes into the timing of the outages.”
These two damaged switches required an emergency repair to prevent an unplanned outage.