Jackson's power plant gets an upgrade

Without disrupting service to customers, five new high-voltage circuit breakers were installed in Jackson's main power plant's substation over the course of two days earlier this week.

The city replaced four old oil-cooled circuit breakers with five vacuum-style breakers that are also capable of automatically resetting circuits. The city bought the equipment last year for $100,000.

"The vacuum breakers are safer," said Don Schuette, Jackson's director of electric utilities. "They have less moving parts, and they have a longer service life. They don't pit and burn themselves up, and there's no messy oil."

The five gray boxes are each more than five feet tall and capable of regulating 12,470 volts.

In the past, Schuette said, a power outage might last anywhere from 15 minutes to two or three hours before getting attention. The new breakers recognize an electrical dip in one-tenth of a second. Before 60 seconds pass, the mechanism tries three times to restore power. After that, it locks down the area with the problem and the city's electrical workers start troubleshooting lines, trying to track down the problem.

The main power plant, at 420 Florence St., is part of a small complex shared with the city's water system. Schuette supervises 19 workers, including one apprentice. Some work on both the electric and water plants. Others are responsible for reading meters, working on lines or troubleshooting.

Providing uninterrupted service is a constant goal, Schuette said, along with "cost avoidance, outage avoidance and emergency readiness."

FRED LYNCH ~ flynch@semissourian.com The Jackson power plant uses two Worthington generators, each with 8,625 horsepower and which run on diesel fuel or natural gas. Jackson has two of the five 20-cylinder units ever built by Worthington, which is no longer in business.

Being ready applies to the workers as well.

Earlier this year, "everything happened," Schuette said, launching into a list of minor and major disaster: damaging winds, serial ice storms, torrential rain and flooding.

In the 118 hours after the ice storm -- nearly five days -- no one supervisor got more than 13 total hours of sleep. That, combined with an influx of 80 workers providing mutual aid, gave Schuette his biggest worry.

"We had stuff falling, outsiders working in our building," he said. Working with high voltage is dangerous under ordinary circumstances. "You can't smell it. You can't see it. You can't hear it. When you feel it, you're dead."

Submitted photo Two city of Jackson utility workers replacing high-voltage lines and a utility pole at a circuit crossing in April.

The biggest accomplishment during the post-storm recovery was that no one suffered even a minor injury, he said. It wasn't until well after the crisis that Schuette discovered a notice, buried under the piled-up mail, announcing Jackson earned a Reliable Public Power Provider award.

Jackson has provided residents with electricity since 1905 and now operates three other substations, on the east and west sides of Jackson and in the city's industrial zone.

Jackson is one of 32 cities in the Missouri Public Energy Pool (MoPEP), a cooperative that buys energy from diverse sources, taking advantage of competitive prices. Some days it's AmerenUE and other days it's wind-generated power, Schuette said.

City-owned generators, powered by natural gas or diesel fuel, are used to reduce the need to be part of the larger power grid, Schuette said.

At times, the city's 6,600 electric customers need as much as 38 megawatts of energy in a day.

Outside of the main building are three generators, each capable of producing 2 mw of power, mounted on individual Caterpillar trailers. Each machine was originally worth $700,000, but Schuette said, the city bought the trio for $1.1 million. He said the generators were put on the market when two Washington state phone companies merged and sold excess equipment. None had run more than six hours.

Inside the brick power plant are two 20-cylinder Worthington generators that produce 6 megawatts of energy each -- only five exist in the world, according to Mike Biri, the city's water and power plant foreman. It wasn't the city's intention to own such rare equipment, Biri said, but "the company that made them went belly up" shortly after Jackson took delivery.

While parts are difficult to get, Biri said, the generators are capable of producing enough energy to power more than 2,000 homes.

The average three-bedroom home in Jackson uses slightly more than 30 kW on any given day and has a $100 monthly bill.

It costs more than $12 million to operate Jackson's electric utility; $11.3 million is budgeted to buy power this year. According to city administrator Jim Roach, electric bills bring in close to $15 million each year. Some of the money is set aside for emergencies.

Between $1 million and $2 million extra generated from electric bills pays for other city services, nearly one-third of the cost of operating the city parks and supplements police, fire and general city operations. The money has also been used to replace firetrucks, police cars and garbage trucks.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127

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