Potlatch substation maintenance longer than planned

Mason PUD 1 customers went longer than expected without power after overnight maintenance on the Potlatch substation June 27.

Residents of Union, Lilliwaup and Hoodsport were scheduled to have electricity cut from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. so Bonneville Power Administration could service the substation.

Power was restored by 8 a.m.

Mason PUD 1 General Manager Kristin Masteller told the Journal in an email that BPA didn’t give a reason for the delay but sometimes work takes longer than anticipated.

“After BPA restored power to their sub that feeds ours, we had to do all our switching on our system and heat the substations back up so we could start picking up the customer load,” Masteller said.

This is called “cold loading” and happens when there’s a power spike all at once after a longer duration outage, she said.

“Even though the temperature was moderate on Friday, we still had pick up the load slowly after the substations were down for that long to make sure it held and didn’t trip the breakers,” according to Masteller.

Two of PUD 1’s substations were out during the maintenance and a section of Union was switched to a third substation, she said.

“When BPA ran long, it pushed our crews’ work out even longer to go through all the steps they need to do to get everyone back in service.”