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Fallen tree limb responsible for Thursday evening Cape Girardeau power outageFriday, September 5, 2008A 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  Note: The nature of the Internet makes it impractical for our staff to review every comment. If you feel that a comment is offensive, please Login or Create an account first, and then you will be able to flag a comment as objectionable. Please also note that those who post comments on semissourian.com may do so using a screen name, which may or may not reflect a website user's actual name. Readers should be careful not to assign comments to real people who may have names similar to screen names. Refrain from obscenity in your comments, and to keep discussions civil, don't say anything in a way your grandmother would be ashamed to read.
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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.