A fallen tree limb is responsible for a Thursday evening power outage in Cape Girardeau that affected about 1,100 AmerenUE customers. Around 8:30 p.m. Thursday, a tree limb came in contact with a power line near 3210 Independence St., according to AmerenUE spokesman Michael Cleary. All but 162 residents had their power restored by 10:42 p.m. The remaining customers had power restored by 1:30 a.m. while repairs were being completed.
"This was an insulated line, so normally a tree contact shouldn’t be a problem," Cleary said. "But in this case, the limb had apparently been rubbing against the line and this caused the insulation to fail. The problem did not appear to be storm-related."
Comments
The nature of the Internet makes it impractical for our staff to review every comment. If you feel that a comment is offensive, use the exclamation point icon beside the comment to send a report to the webmaster.
Respond to this story
You are not logged in. Please login or create an account.
![[SeMissourian.com]](/images/nameplate.gif)
Marketplace
Print
Email link
Respond to editor
Post comment
117
1100 customers consuming an assumed average of 1 kilowatt per hour each for 2.2 hours, and 162 for 2.8 additional hours beyond the original 2.2 hours = 2873 total kilowatt-hours of lost electric sales opportunity. At the Ameren 'summer' rate of 7.92 cents per KWH - this amounts to $228 of lost revenue.
Suggest this is the challenge utilities face - is it less expensive to cut any and all trees back far enough so there is no chance of a tree-caused power outage, or to just pay out for the occasional failure and related overtime costs to correct? Just WAGging - but suggest that a lineman's overtime rate is in the neighborhood of $50 per hour each. Figure that Ameren lost money on this deal - the cost of repairing the damage was more than the lost revenues and the corresponding smaller lost profits.
Reliability and cost are inversely proportional - the challenge is to determine where the best all-around solution lies. Power outages are bad for public relations, but so are rate hikes - "we're being gouged by big energy and somebody needs to do something" and excessive tree-trimming - "oh, you've butchered my beautiful tree". Can there ever be a win-win situation?
And no, I do not work for Ameren nor any other utility. Just a real tight-wad, but with the understanding that businesses can't be net charities and do need to make a profit.