OPD5 line workers in the field worked together with substation operators back at the office to bring back power quickly to thousands of customers earlier this week in Mesquite.
Line crew workers in Mesquite were called out in the heat of the afternoon on Monday, July 22 due to the major outage. At 4:24 pm, a faulty splice termination blew out on an underground distribution feeder cable inside of a vault located on W. Pioneer Blvd, just west of Willis Carrier Canyon Road. The outage immediately knocked out power to 2,061 customers in the area during the hottest part of the day.
The crew was dispatched to the site immediately to address the problem. They quickly worked with substation operations personnel in the Overton office to isolate the faulted cable and then determine how best to switch and reroute power to restore service.
Through this team approach, the OPD5 staff were able to bring back power to all affected customers, except one, within only 7 minutes.
The line crew then continued working on the problem for another 3 hours to bring the last affected customer back online. The crew meticulously replaced the problem splice, as well as splices on two other adjacent phases that had been damaged in the fault.
“They did what needed to be done despite it being the hottest part of the day,” said Line Operations Manager Kyle Leavitt of his line crew. “They recognized that it is such a crucial time of day for our customers to have power service. So the teamwork approach between the men in the field and the guys in the control room was vital to getting the power back on quickly.”
Through teamwork and training, the OPD5 staff has assessed the root cause of the fault and are already taking measures to prevent similar issues in the future.
“By the end of that same day we had already done a full assessment of this event and put together a plan to help avoid this problem going forward,” Leavitt said.