6.1g ERMUSR 07-13-2021______________________________________________________________________________
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UTILITIES COMMISSION MEETING
TO:
ERMU Commission
FROM:
Thomas Geiser – Operations Director
MEETING DATE:
July 13, 2021
AGENDA ITEM NUMBER:
6.1g
SUBJECT:
Staff Update
ACTION REQUESTED:
None
DISCUSSION:
• Staff continues to meet with T2 Utility Engineers, WSB Engineering, and MnDOT for the
upcoming Highway 169 Redefine project. Permits have been approved and we are in full
construction mode for the electric portion of the work to be done.
• Staff met with the County and Bolton & Menk, Inc. to review 90% plans for the County
State Aid Highway 13 project, which will bring roundabouts to Line Avenue and Tyler
Street. Staff has begun setting new poles and has pulled the first run of overhead lines
for the new line location. Crews are also working on transferring customers to the new
line.
• Working with the owners of the refuse-derived fuel (RDF) processing plant and Great
River Energy (GRE) to make the transition from GRE’s 69-kilovolt transmission line to
ERMU’s distribution grid. Staff has begun installation of the necessary underground
infrastructure for the transition, which is planned for August 2. Our two substation
transformers from the plant have been delivered to the RDF site. We are still working
through the details to bring a new 480-volt service to the site.
• We are having issues with the single phase fuse pads we ordered from a vendor last
year. Four of the twenty we’ve received have failed after installation or are not working
at all. We are working with the vendor and Irby Utilities to find a solution.
• A pole was struck by a vehicle on Highway 169, north of 219th Avenue. The pole has
been replaced.
• On Monday, June 28 at 12:30pm, A contractor doing demolition work for a business on
Highway 10 hooked on to a wire and broke our pole in half. The wire then slingshot
across the highway and wrapped into our main three phase line on the other side. This
knocked out Feeder 46 which feeds the eastside of town. We were able to restore
power within 90 minutes. Approximately 95 customers were affected.
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• On Friday July 2 at 12:21pm, a truck hooked onto a cable line hanging from our pole on
County Road 33, east of Highway 169, breaking one pole and causing Feeder 62 to trip.
This created an outage for 946 customers. Crews were able to perform some switching
to get most of the customers on quickly while others had to wait until we made repairs.
Overall, everyone did a great job working together to get through this outage on a
Friday afternoon with a limited staff due to the holiday. Here are some statistics for the
timeline of the outage.
Meters Out Meters Restored
946 149 @ 55 minutes
797 394 @ 68 minutes
403 95 @ 70 minutes
308 197 @ 189 minutes
111 111 @ 279 Minutes
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