Several times this past summer the lights went out in Providence’s Jewelry District, an approximately 10-block area roughly quartered by Point and Weybosset streets filled with businesses ranging from restaurants to gas stations to dot coms. Although equilibrium and service were eventually restored the sheer volume of the incidents, which didn’t seem connected to any storms, caused some folks to wonder – what’s up with the city’s electricity delivery system, and is there enough infrastructure to handle current and projected demand?
Narragansett Electric Co. officials are used to those kinds of questions, especially these days, as rising costs amid failed deregulation promises have fueled a certain amount of public skepticism.
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But they also promise that the city’s grid, or transmission and distribution system is sound and continually monitored.
“Any distribution system evolves as customers come,” said Kathy A. Lyford P.E., operations planner for Narragansett Electric, and the system is continually built and maintained always with an eye toward meeting future demand.
Besides, “old to one person might not be old to another,” Lyford said, adding that monitoring criteria varies based on the type of the equipment. “Years ago, they manufactured [equipment] much more robustly” and not as precisely designed to specifications as they do today, she said, so in some ways the adage “they don’t make it like they used to” applies in this case.
Aside from the obvious problem of outages, Narragansett has a variety of systems to track, to “find out that things are starting to go wrong,” Lyford said, including regular testing and scheduled maintenance.
Power outages occur when irregular conditions result in “faults” – such as an electrical conductor, usually a wire, hitting the ground; an open circuit (when a conductor breaks) and a short circuit, when a connection is created accidentally between two conductors or a conductor and the ground. Officials say faults are usually detected by special equipment like circuit breakers that automatically shut off power to prevent damage.
Weather plays a big role in grid reliability, Lyford said, and “this particular year there has been a significant increase in lightning storms,” situations that “really brew havoc along the system,” damaging cable and causing it to degrade over time.
Other times electrical outages could be caused by workmanship problems, automobile accidents, construction and excavation, overgrown trees and vandalism. Sometimes it’s simply the work of squirrels and rodents, Lyford said.
Approximately 15 percent of the state’s distribution system is underground and 85 percent above ground, or 3,300 circuit miles above and 600 circuit miles below, said Robert G. Seega, vice president and director of public affairs for Narragansett Electric.
Most of Providence, at least the core of the city’s system, is located underground, and this equipment “can be anywhere from brand new to 60 or 70 years old,” Seega said, adding that “there’s no simple answer” or foolproof way to break it down further into how much of each type of equipment is how old.
Originally a 2,300-volt system was installed beneath the Jewelry District in 1920. In 1941 it was converted to a 4,000-volt system and in succeeding years, the late ’40s and ’50s, the company installed lots of different switching equipment, Seega said.
So the cable beneath the Jewelry District ranges in age from 1920 up to contemporary installation. This summer, Seega said, certain switching equipment was replaced after approximately four to six outages, some of which “involved a very few customers.”
Still, Seega said, the Jewelry District is “clearly now an area” that concerns Narragansett Electric. They plan to install more switching gear that would automatically convert a customer to another feeder in the event of an outage, at a cost of about $100,000 and without involving the replacement of ductwork and cable. “It’s frightfully expensive to rip out all the streets,” he said, adding that age and maintenance-wise “the rest of the city is probably in the same category” as the Jewelry District.
“We do these distribution area studies,” Seega said, to try and stay ahead of expected load requirements, and the company has committed to spend about $5 million to build new substations to meet these new demands.
There are two substation projects on the table right now, one in Providence already under way at the corner of Point and Eddy streets and a similar project planned for Johnston. Narragansett Electric was still pursuing town approvals for that project last week, with a zoning board hearing on the matter scheduled for last Thursday (See related story).
Substations are the part of the grid or system that transform high voltage into voltage consumers can use.
According to Narragansett Electric’s parent company spokesperson, Deborah Drew of National Grid USA, electricity is generated at 2,300 to 20,000 volts at power plants and generating stations and then stepped up to transmission voltages. Transmission lines and towers then transport the power to electrical substations in populated areas at 69,000, 115,000, 230,000 or 345,000 volts.
At the substations voltages are then stepped down to distribution voltages at 2,400 to 34,000 volts and transported along distribution or feeder lines to the transformers one sees on utility poles.
Transformers step the voltage down to secondary voltage levels, and secondary or service lines then deliver the power to residences and businesses. Secondary voltage levels range from 120 to 240 volts used by most homes up to 600 volts, depending on the customer’s equipment, Drew said.
Narragansett Electric’s capital budget for its Capitol District for fiscal year 2001 is $20 million and its operating and maintenance budget is $16.8 million, significant numbers, Lyford said.
Some of the money goes to upgrading substations, but the largest portion, she said, is devoted to load growth and constructing new facilities to connect new customers.
Since capital improvements are included in the rate base, customers pay for them “as they do in any business,” Lyford said, but for the next five years Narragansett Electric has capped these costs.
(Editor’s note: Providence Business News is located on Richmond Street in the Jewelry District.)
