News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
New steel poles have been erected in Tollgate.
Work crews installed a new steel power pole at the Tollgate substation earlier this month.
The erection of the tower was part of an approximately $5 million project undertaken by Central Electric Cooperative (CEC) to upgrade transmission lines running through Tollgate to Black Butte Ranch. It is part of a larger Redmond-Sisters upgrade, which has been dogged with controversy as landowners have fought against having taller steel poles installed on their land.
The project has continued and has now reached the western reaches of the Sisters area.
"The Tollgate-Black Butte Ranch upgrade is part of a multi-year project to upgrade transmission from Redmond to our western grid from 69-kV (69,000 volts) to 115-kV (115,000 volts)," said new CEC member services director Alan Guggenheim, himself a Tollgate resident.
"CEC has supplied its Sisters area western grid with power from the Bonneville Power Administration substation in Redmond by transmission lines carrying 69-kV power since the early 1960s. The area population has grown substantially since that time, and at the recommendation of BPA, we are upgrading the lines to 115-kV capability," he said.
The wooden poles that previously carried power were 56.5 feet tall; the new steel poles are 65 feet tall, resting in nine-foot-deep holes.
Taller, self-weathering steel poles were required to handle larger lines, Guggenheim said. The poles are also less susceptible to fire and have lightning protection.
"These steel poles have a projected life of 80 years in wet environments and a much longer life in the dry climate of Central Oregon," Guggenheim said. "They are not susceptible to the things that can shorten the life of wood poles, such as ground rot, shell rot, woodpeckers or lightning damage."
The project is designed to cope with growth in the Sisters area.
"It's obviously to improve the reliability (of power), especially during the inclement weather ... and also to address the growth in that area," Guggenheim said.
He said that "the multi-year upgrade of CEC's western grid facilities from Redmond to the edge of our western grid, including Suttle Lake, Hoodoo and Camp Sherman, should enable CEC to meet all of its western area load demand through 2027."
The upgrade is also supposed to make outages less frequent and easier to repair.
The utility dealt with such an outage on Friday, September 28.
"Shortly after 6 a.m. (on Friday), about 100 Central Electric accounts in the Camp Sherman area, including Suttle Lake and Hoodoo Ski Resort, lost power because of a ground fault on an underground distribution line," Guggenheim reported.
"In order to locate and make the necessary repairs, power service was cut at 10:15 a.m. to the approximately 500 member accounts in that area. Power was restored to Suttle Lake and Hoodoo shortly after 1 p.m. and to Camp Sherman shortly after 3 p.m."
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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