Dear Mount Horeb,
As you all have come to know, our Wally Rd substation has been experiencing ongoing intermittent outages over the past year. We have tried to go above and beyond to get this issue solved. There has been extensive testing done and some equipment has been tested more than once. It has been very hard to pinpoint an issue when the tests are showing everything functioning fine when we know it isn’t fine. The electric utility has had a fault recorder in place
for the past year at Wally Rd substation hoping to get some information. The outage on February 8th, 2023 that occurred at Wally Rd substation finally gave us the information that we’ve been looking for.
The information obtained from the outage has been directed towards a bad relay within Wally Rd substation. Relays were the first thing tested at the time and the results came back okay. Since the outage, we have replaced all of the relays and energized Wally Rd substation. We are quite certain a bad relay was the cause of the substation issue but cannot be 100% accurate; therefore, this is where this letter comes into play. We want to give you all an idea on what the issue was and how we are trying to get this situation figured out that works for everyone.
In 2 weeks, the electric utility is going to put load back on Wally Rd substation. Changing out the relays we are very confident this will solve the intermittent outages at Wally Rd substation but we cannot be 100% certain. With that being said, we need Wally Rd substation running 100% for upcoming planned switching procedures. We will also be rearranging some equipment between Wally Rd substation and the Downtown substation to help give a direction towards a problem if the relay changeout is determined to not be the issue.
The electric utility already had planned upgrades at the Downtown substation so this equipment is on hand and readily available right now. We feel it is in best interest for future electric rates to do this swap and try to eliminate certain equipment from the current issue. However, by doing some changeouts of equipment, there is still the possibility of an issue causing an outage. With the high costs of equipment in a substation right now and long lead times, we are willing to take this risk and are relying heavily on the data collected from the fault recorder to make this decision. We feel the outcome is going to come out on our side as we have some of the best in Wisconsin working on this issue.
We thank you for your patience over the past year. It hasn’t been an easy issue to find but we are making progress in the right direction. We want to continue providing everyone safe and reliable power, day in and day out. If there is anything we can do, please do not hesitate to contact anyone with Mount Horeb Electric Utility. We look forward to continue working with everyone in this great community.
Kind regards,
Jordan Schmitz
Superintendent
Mount Horeb Electric Utility
138 E Main St
(608)437-3300
