Los Gatos Weekly-Times

PG&E works to make power reliable in local mountains during the winter

Study showed some circuits failed more often than others

Work continues through year

By Clarence Cromwell

When winter storms downed mountain-area PG&E power lines two years ago, Kay Young went for almost three days without electricity and water. What little water remained in her storage tank had to be saved for drinking because her water system relies on an electric pump.

"We couldn't shower or anything," Young recalled.

It wasn't the first time the lights went out, either. Mountain residents have resigned themselves to occasional outages as a fact of life in a region with power lines strung along steep wooded slopes; lines get whipped by fierce winds, shorted out by windblown branches and occasionally snapped by falling trees.

"You never know, living up here," Young said. "A tree falls down, and it takes out power for the whole hillside."

Three circuits that serve Los Gatos have failed more often than they should have, according to a recent PG&E study, so the utility is undertaking a $2 million project to make the circuits more reliable for the 10,000 customers connected to them.

PG&E utility crews will work until the end of the year installing 250 miles of insulated cable, less likely to be shorted out than the exposed metal cables now in use, said PG&E spokesperson Scott Blakey. About 26 miles of underground cable is to be replaced as well.

Crews will also install special switching equipment to help the utility restore power faster in an outage. New circuit-breakers will reset themselves after they're tripped by a temporary short circuit or power surge. Special switches along power lines will reroute power when a part of the system fails; comparing the improved circuits to a string of Christmas lights, Blakey explained that if one "light" goes out--or rather the power at one home--the rest of the lights will still work, whereas with the current wiring every light further down the circuit would also go out.

The project will make power circuits more reliable and will save PG&E crews hours of labor to find the causes of outages.

"We're trying to eliminate as many potential problems as possible in advance of what appears to be a rough winter," Blakey said. "If you've got 100 mph winds going through there, like we did in 1995, you're going to have outages."

News of the repairs was a relief to Capt. Doug Rinella of the California Department of Forestry's Alma Fire Station.

Rinella said numerous forest fires in the Santa Cruz Mountains involve PG&E power lines, even when the utility keeps up tree-trimming efforts diligently.

The Alma station is less vulnerable to power outages than are most mountain residents because it's equipped with a generator.

The need for the Los Gatos repairs was discovered through the Electric Distribution Reliability Project. The company used helicopters and footpaths to survey hundreds of miles of line through rough terrain.

A study of PG&E records showed that West Valley power lines aren't as reliable as most PG&E power lines.

Throughout the utility's service area, 150 out of 2,000 circuits must be replaced, said Mary Ellen Ittner of PG&E.

Customers will receive a letter or a telephone call if PG&E plans any power interruptions during the upgrading projects. Any customers needing more information can call 725-7797, the company's Electric Service Reliability Line.

Repairs are scheduled in the four following areas:

* The circuit that serves the Los Gatos hills areas of Loma Alta, Alpine, Foster and Soda Springs, the east side of Lexington Reservoir, Aldercroft heights, San Jose-Soquel, Summit, Loma Prieta and part of Main Street.

* The circuit that serves Los Gatos south from Shannon Road to Kennedy Road, along Los Gatos Boulevard to Mozart Avenue, including Lark Avenue and Marchmont Drive.

* The circuit serving mountain areas along Highway 17 south from Los Gatos Boulevard to Summit Road, including Bear Creek, Old Santa Cruz Highway, Villa, Redwood Estates and parts of Loma Prieta.

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