Scott City presses for outage fix

Every time the power flashes, it means about an hour's worth of lost production for the Mid-South Wire Co. plant in Scott City.

Over the past few months, possibly as long as six months, according to Scott City Mayor Tim Porch, those flashes have been happening frequently. For Mid-South, Scott City's newest production facility, that means lost money.

"It can be costly, due to the production you lose and the potential damage to equipment," said Andy Talbot, general manager of the Scott City plant and vice president of the Nashville, Tenn.-based company. The machines Mid-South uses to make its wire product are computerized and must be rebooted each time the power goes out. In addition, the company uses energy-efficient light bulbs that require the filament to warm up before they reach full strength, a process that takes several minutes. And any time an outage happens during the week it affects Mid-South, because the plant runs 24 hours a day, five days a week.

The outages are brief, sometimes only a split second, and they usually occur in the morning. But the hassle is severe enough that the Scott City government is pressing the city's electricity supplier, AmerenUE, to find the cause and fix the problem.

Some days the power interruptions happen several times, some days none at all. But when it does happen, Porch said, there are consequences.

"It's absolutely playing havoc with our businesses," Porch said. And if prospective businesses, especially manufacturers like Mid-South, can't count on a steady power supply, they may not want to come to Scott City, he said.

Ameren thought it had the flickering power fixed a few weeks ago when a broken lightning arrester was found and replaced on the estimated 25 to 30 miles of line that make up the Scott City circuit, said Ameren spokesman Mike Cleary. Since then, Cleary said, Ameren hasn't been aware of more incidents of flickering power and isn't sure what could be causing the problem. Cleary said Ameren believes the problem has been corrected, and the company has received no complaints in recent weeks. Nor has a systemic problem developed in other area cities, Cleary said.

But the problem may still be there, as the power flickered Thursday morning in Scott City.

The momentary outage Thursday morning may not even be tied to previous outages -- it could be the result of an entirely unrelated cause, Cleary said. Ameren's circuits are designed so such momentary outages will occur if animals or objects somehow get into the system. This design actually serves to prevent outages of longer duration, Cleary said.

Cleary said these quick, temporary outages he calls "momentaries" can be extremely hard to detect, because no one knows when they're going to happen so no one can be on hand to observe the problem and find its source.

"That's one of the most exasperating things to find," Cleary said of the momentary outages. The Scott City circuit lines also run through areas with many trees, increasing the odds of problems like flickering power, Cleary said.

Talbot said he's contacted both the city government and Ameren -- a company that gave Mid-South a $150,000 grant to help start operations -- and both have put in a good effort to get to the bottom of the outages.

"They've all been very responsive," Talbot said. "They're doing everything they can to help us."

But Porch said he wants a fix to the problem -- if it hadn't been fixed already -- as soon as possible.

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182