Utility Company Emergency Preparedness and Resource Planning

Types of emergencies your electric utility may face depend on where you are, though some hazards are present across North America. Or, you may need to contribute some of your team to assist in disaster response in another area — your crews might need to respond to a type of disaster that doesn't usually occur in your location. Understanding the threats to electric utilities becomes essential in creating your emergency response plans for restoring power

A national response event or NRE is not a single type of emergency. Instead, it is a situation that causes a power outage in a large population or across multiple regions. Only significant events such as acts of war, major hurricanes or earthquakes trigger NREs. 

These events typically require assistance from multiple regional mutual assistance groups (RMAGs). The size and scope of the outage make restoring power more difficult and more important due to the large number of people affected. Organization among RMAGs to ensure adequate response to the outage is essential for restoring power.

Hurricanes cause devastation to power lines due to their widespread nature and the damage done to roadways. Crews attempting to restore power need to have streets cleared of debris and fallen trees before getting to the power lines to repair them.

While hurricanes often come with some warning, the timing could be as little as a few hours, especially in cases of storms unexpectedly turning or suddenly strengthening. These types of events require large-scale restoration efforts that may take days or weeks, depending on the severity of the storm and its impact on the area. For example, Hurricane Ike that hit Texas in 2008 required two weeks for full power restoration.

Earthquakes strike without warning and can quickly disrupt power distribution and transmission. The high population of earthquake-prone areas and the large spread of damage place many earthquake scenarios as NREs. A catastrophic earthquake model puts between 18 and 20 million people at risk of being affected.

While hurricanes often cause downed power lines and damaged transformers, earthquakes have a greater likelihood of damaging power plants, substations and transmission lines with potentially weeks to months of required restoration times.

Between 2000 and 2014, severe weather such as ice storms, thunderstorms and temperature extremes accounted for 44% of outages, or 8 million outages during that time in the U.S. Temperature extremes can also cause overdemand on the system, especially when extreme heat or cold impact areas that rely almost exclusively on electricity for heating and cooling.

Even with regular maintenance, equipment errors can still happen, and human error can contribute to temporary outages in an area. In fact, among distribution system problems that lead to outages, human error or equipment failure ranks as second only to fallen trees or weather as a top cause.

Malicious attacks are threats to the system, such as theft or vandalism causing outages, or cyberattacks impacting the system. These types of attacks rank low among potential dangers to utility distribution systems. However, they can cause serious disruption. A hypothetical cyberattack could leave 93 million customers without power, mostly due to disruptions at power plants.

Other forms of malicious attacks, such as acts of war or terrorism that impact distribution lines, can also disrupt power delivery.

Accidents such as vehicles hitting power poles and knocking down transmission lines can impact local customers. While these disruptions are often on a smaller scale, automotive accidents accounted for over 9% of power disruptions between 2008 to 2014.

Animals can also lead to accidental power outages, and between 2008 to 2014, they accounted for around 7% of power outages. By installing wildlife guards, outages caused by accidental animal issues dropped 80%. Depending on the impact animals have on your utility, you may save money in restoration costs by investing in prevention techniques.

The variety of emergencies requires effective preparation to ensure your utility company is ready for anything. While hurricanes can provide your operation warning to give you time to stock up on replacement parts, malicious attacks, supply disruptions, earthquakes and severe weather don't offer you time to prepare. Therefore, you need a plan ready to implement at any time. Use the following tips to ensure your company is ready to restore power as soon as possible after an emergency.

First, train all personnel in their roles and responsibilities for disaster response. You should plan to train several backup teams instead of only relying on individuals to replace personnel. Groups of your workers could be stuck at home or require breaks during the power restoration process. Having several teams allows you to swap out members during restoration.

When training personnel, plan for a variety of scenarios and conduct regular drills, both scheduled and unannounced, to ensure the readiness of your team members. You should also stock up on adequate food, water, medical supplies and possibly bedding to tend to workers who may need shelter at your facility during the restoration process.

Make emergency response as simple as possible to avoid mistakes happening during the event. For instance, keep supplies ready to go for restoring power. Create emergency kits with the replacement parts for transmission and distribution lines and the tools needed to install them. Place these in a storage area where workers can quickly stock their trucks with everything they need to restore power.

Remember that there are national support networks of mutual assistance. Volunteer networks allow for other utility providers in unaffected areas to loan your team restoration crews to speed up your efforts.

Mutual assistance programs allow your team to get the support it needs during a response to an emergency. All restoration crew members in these programs receive the training they need to help get power restored in your area and to safely navigate the affected region. As professional utility crews, they already know how to restore power quickly and effectively.

For instance, in 2012 when 10 million people lost power from Hurricane Sandy, more than 80 utility companies across the United States and Canada sent tens of thousands of workers to help get power back on.

After an event, conduct an assessment of your response. Did your crews get the power restored as quickly as possible? What obstacles did you face? How could you improve next time? The answers to these questions and others can help you refine your future actions for emergency power restoration.

The process of preparing for emergencies does not stop. Keep evaluating and refining your emergency utility responses. Use feedback from running drills with your teams and from actual responses following events to hone your strategy for getting power restored.

At Bekaert, we are committed to responding to our customers' needs with quality controls, prompt service and necessary support. Our competitive pricing, established reputation and storm response capabilities make us stand apart from other providers of steel wire products. We are the leader in North America for manufacturing and supplying steel wire products to utility companies throughout the continent.

Our products for utilities include guy wires that are necessary for supporting utility transmission towers and poles. We also have static shield for transmission towers to prevent lightning damage. Our lineup of steel wire products for energy utility structures includes everything from messenger wires to hose wire and more. When you have our products on hand for utility restoration, your workers reduce the time required to reset poles and secure them from falling. 

Contact us today at Bekaert for a quote on our utility transmission products.