Tuesday, October 15, 2024
By Bert Lehman
he cause of a regulator exploding and causing a fire at the East Madison Street substation Aug. 1 in Clintonville is still unknown, and may never be known.
That was the message that Clintonville Utilities Manager Dave Tichinel told the Clintonville Common Council at an Aug. 13 Committee of Whole meeting.
Explosion details
Tichinel said a regulator at the substation “blew up.” He said a regulator regulates voltage after it is transferred down from 35,000 volts to 4,000 volts by a transformer for households in the neighborhood.
The power went out, due to the explosion, at 2:02 p.m. and power was restored by around 2:20 p.m., Tichinel said.
“This was a pretty good outage,” Tichinel said. “It could have been very dangerous, but everyone responded well and did an absolute perfect job.”
After the explosion, Tichinel said he contacted the Wisconsin DNR, which was required, as well as the city’s insurance company.
“I found out stuff that I didn’t obviously know as electric manager, so it was a learning curve for me,” Tichinel said.
He said he also contacted electric utility managers in area communities, and the electric utility manager in New London provided him with a lot of useful information.
Tichinel said everything was not cleaned up the day of the explosion because they concentrated on putting the fire out, and then let everything cool down.
“It was very, extremely hot,” Tichinel said.
The DNR informed Tichinel the day after the explosion that the city would need to clean up the affected area in the substation that same day. This required utility staff to be called into work, as some staff had the day off.
“But we did clean it up the best we could,” Tichinel said. “The gravel and stuff was cleaned up that day.”
Tichinel said utility staff could have done the cleanup themselves, but the DNR was not completely comfortable with that option. The city was required to hire a company with a hazmat team to oversee the cleanup. This company then reported back to the DNR.
When originally contacting the city’s insurance company, Tichinel said he was told the city would be responsible for the clean-up costs. He said the clean-up would be expensive because two dumpsters filled with gravel and oil needed to be disposed of. The oil did not include PCBs, as it was mineral oil.
The gravel and oil were disposed of, Tichinel said.
After the city’s insurance company reviewed the insurance policy closer, Tichinel was informed that the insurance would cover all costs associated with the cleanup, as well as all of the equipment that was damaged in the explosion. The cost of the two loads of gravel needed to replace the gravel that was removed, will not be covered by insurance.
As of the date of the council meeting, Tichinel said utility staff were still cleaning the equipment in the substation.
“There’s a lot of switches that need to be replaced,” Tichinel said.
He added that the transformer still works, which was welcomed news to the utility, as it would cost around $1 million if the transformer would have needed to be replaced.
The regulator that exploded will need to be replaced, and Tichinel said he was currently working on finding a replacement.
Tichinel said the utility does not completely know what caused the explosion. They originally thought that since it was very hot that day, that the regulator overloaded.
“That was not the case,” Tichinel said.
The regulator was new in 1999, and Tichinel said it should have a longer life than 25 years. He added that the life of a regulator is 50 years.
There was a similar type of explosion and fire at a New London substation not long ago with the exact same type of regulator, Tichinel said.
This led Tichinel to ask the engineers if the regulator was faulty. The engineer said that was not the case since the regulator was 25 years old.
Tichinel said the engineers think there was a “hot spot” in the internal workings of the regulator. This type of a hot spot would not show up when the regulator is tested each year. He emphasized that the regulators are tested each year.
“It’s almost impossible to find out exactly what happened to this regulator, besides it blew up,” Tichinel said. “We’re pretty confident to say it wasn’t from the weather, the heat, or that it was overloaded. If I had to guess, it was a malfunction in that regulator that showed up 25 years later, and that could happen.”
Tichinel said that that side of the substation is currently not working, but there are two sides to each substation, with each side containing a transformer and three regulators. So, half of the East Madison substation is still working.
He added that he will request multiple quotes to get the other half of the substation up and running.
“As of right now, the quotes I’m looking at, we’re probably talking, with the insurance and stuff, probably under $100,000 to get that substation up and running,” Tichinel said. “That’s still a lot of money.”
Ald. Greg Rose asked if additional electric load is being routed through the working half of the East Madison substation since the other half of the substation doesn’t work.
Tichinel said additional electric load is being routed through the working half of the substation, but the additional load is also being routed to other substations in the city.
“If we put all the load on that half, I’d be afraid it would blow up too,” Tichinel said.
