Iola city officials still are investigating whether computer controls to a pair of electric generators can be fixed to prevent power outages early Thursday when Westar again disconnects electricity to the city for about two hours.
Iola must generate its own electricity starting at the stroke of midnight Thursday morning while Westar completes installation of a new 69,000 kilowatt line into its grid.
A similar endeavor led to an overnight power outage last Wednesday for scores of homes and businesses in and around Iola when the city’s generators shut down after about 30 minutes of operation. A computer failure at the controls of Iola’s two natural gas-fired Wartsila generators was cited as the cause of the outage. Circuit failures around town then hampered efforts as crews struggled to restore power to the city using diesel generators.
Crews were eventually able to fire up three of the city’s five diesel generators, providing power to much of Iola, but homes in the east part of town and Gas were without electricity until about 6 a.m. Thursday, when Westar restored its electric service to the city.
During the outage, Gates Corporation and Russell Stover Candies sent their respective night shift employees home, and Iola’s Walmart Supercenter and Jump Start Travel Center were closed for about nine hours.
Without the Wartsila generators, and their 10 megawatts of capacity, the city is unable to provide electric service to all of its customers if Gates and Russell Stover plants are online.
Corey Schinstock, assistant city administrator, said the city hopes to know by Monday whether the computer issue with the Wartsilas will be resolved by Wednesday night.
“Then we’ll know what our plans are,” Schinstock said.
JEFF LIVINGSTON, store manager at Iola Walmart, said the supercenter was forced to dispose of 6,000 pounds of perishable food because of the outage. Clearing the spoiled — mainly refrigerated and frozen meat — took about 12 hours.
The store has brought in a generator to maintain power in case Walmart loses power again next week during the outage.
“We were surprised when the power went off,” said David Shapland, chief financial officer for Russell Stover Candies. “We were aware, from the Register’s story, that the power switch was going to be made,” and thought it was would occur without any disruption.
“Basically, we lost a shift of production,” Shapland said. “We’re assessing what the out-of-pocket cost was. It will have a financial impact on us.
“We hope the city has assessed the root cause of what happened and that it doesn’t happen again,” Shapland said.
Larry Macha figures “several thousands of dollars were lost” in lost fuel sales at Jump Start Travel Center, 1700 East St., during the nine-hour outage.
Macha said store managers worked through the night to get perishable food into coolers and then needed about another hour once power was restored to get the store back in order to open.
He said it would be a few days before a sales records review could be completed to determine what the cost was from having to close the 24-hour-a-day operation.
“We have a lot big trucks stop for fuel each night,” he said.
Gates officials did not return calls seeking comment.
THE OUTAGE did not affect Heartland Rural Electric Cooperative’s customers near Iola, even though Heartland, too, receives electricity from Westar.
Heartland was able to maintain service to its substation northeast of Iola by rerouting electricity from substations in Elsmore and Rose. About 2 megawatts of electricity are needed to provide power to Heartland’s local customers.
Maintaining power without the Westar feed would have been impossible two years ago, before Heartland completed a $16 million infrastructure upgrade, said Ron Graber, Heartland spokesman. Using $12 million in FEMA hazard mitigation funds, Heartland installed additional lines through its service grid in 2010.
The upgrade was completed to protect Heartland customers from potential outages during bad weather, Graber said, “but it worked quite well for us in this case, too.”
Hearland provides service to nearly 1,000 locations in Allen County. Graber said Heartland officials plan a similar response for the Westar outage this week as well.
