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Neil Traver, northeast division manager for Arizona Public Service (APS), shared the new policy and procedures for wildfire mitigation with the council at the Taylor Town Council meeting on April 4.
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“The tragic events that happened in the State of California has made APS take a look at their fire policy,” began Traver. “We are working to modify the grid to reduce the opportunity for our distribution lines to contribute to a fire.”
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Traver went on to explain that the reclosing devices, which are on the lines, are engineered to allow for the lines to be repowered up to three times in single instance should a branch, Mylar balloon or even the neighbor’s trampoline hit the power lines.
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“Right now if a tree branch hits the line, the reclosing device will turn the power off for a moment and then turn it back on,” said Traver. “That is called a momentary. If the object is still affecting the line, the power will turn off and on three times.”
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Should the object still be obstructing the line after the third power up, the reclosing device will turn off the line until there is human interaction to reset it.
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“During fire season we don’t want any chance of a power line in the grass being turned back on and sparking a fire,” continued Traver. “This month or early next month, when the forest indicates a high fire risk, we will turn the reclosing devices off. There is a potential of extended outages in doing this, but it will eliminate the potential of a wildfire from our lines. We figure that a minor inconvenience of two seconds or even a couple of hours of outage is a better answer than starting a major fire.”
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APS will be sending mailers for anyone whose line might be affected. Traver also noted that APS did this last year during the fire season and it was very successful.
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