DPU gives report on power outages

Los Alamos residents are no strangers to power outages and it’s common knowledge that some areas are worse than others.

As a result of repeated phone calls regarding the outages, Utilities Manager John Arrowsmith, and Department of Public Utilities Engineer Rafael De la Torre, were in council chambers on Tuesday night to present a report to councilors on the reliability of the electric distribution system.

According to the report, De La Torre is working on modeling each of the Department of Public Utilities’ seven circuits to determine the proper settings on the county’s over-current protection devices.

Each circuit takes approximately 40 hours of work to model. Once the circuit is modeled, their on-call electrical engineering firm verifies the calculations.

Once confirmed, the computations are used to reprogram their protective devices. When the process is completed, the system should be more stable.

As a follow-up on the process, staff will add new over-current protection devices to lateral lines to further isolate faults. The installations are expected to take approximately six months.

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