To avoid a repeat of last week’s power outage that put some residents of Iola and Gas in the dark for hours, Westar Energy won’t shut down its power supply to Iola during connection of a new 69,000-kilowatt feeder line into Heartland Electric’s rural system Thursday morning.
Iola was set to generate its own electricity with two gas-fired Wartsila generators — with a capacity of 10 megawatts — at the stroke of midnight Thursday morning while Westar completed the project.
Iola City Administrator Carl Slaugh said Monday the energy company has agreed to maintain power during the transition because the computer issues that caused the city’s generators to malfunction last week have not been resolved.
“Last week, (Westar) completely turned off these lines … so that they didn’t have hot power to deal with,” he said.
Because the line installation set to get under way will require less time and labor than last week’s transfer, Slaugh said Westar can safely complete the project while continuing
distribution of power.
“We just didn’t have the time to try and get all of our computer systems back up and a level of assurance that we wouldn’t have another power outage,” he said. “Westar is planning to do this so there will not be any power interruption. They won’t have to depend on us to generate our own electrical power or cut off power to the city.”
Still, Slaugh said city workers would be available throughout the night in case problems occur and the city generators are called upon.
“We will still be here as a standby in case something happens,” he said.
