(AS REFERENCED IN CGC #982)

  On Tuesday, December 22, 2009 at 12:13 PM PST, Mts. Wilson and Harvard suffered another unanticipated commercial power outage -- this time a nine hour outage.  It left broadcasters on generators or (probably in at least one case) off the air.

  One broadcast engineer wrote, "I have been responsible for transmitters at Mt. Wilson for over 32 years and this power situation is the worst I've seen in all that time."  Of course, the destruction of the backup commercial power feed in the Station Fire put Wilson/Harvard in this vulnerable situation, but in a way that was a blessing because now there was the political pressure to find and fix the age-old problem that knocked the main power feed out of commission from time to time.

  At 5:22 PM on December 22, Southern California Edison reported as follows:

  "...we have found some lines where the phases slap together [in windy conditions] which causes an R&R and it will lock the circuit out.  That happened this morning and the crew started up the hill where they were able to re-energize the line.  Then it locked out again.  It seems like the issue is being caused by lines where the phases slap together -- no other cause has been identified yet....  Troubleman (sic) are up on the hill working now and are out of cell phone range as they are working in the canyons...."

  At 6:37 PM, a broadcast site manager recapped his telcon with Edison:

  "Edison has found an area that had line slapping together causing the phase short.  It is near the bottom of the hill.  Very similar to the issue they had on the [old backup power line that burnt down in the Station Fire] where under certain wind direction and speed, the lines would slap together.

  "[They are] installing spacers....  At least they located one section which has had issues, hopefully they will get this taken care of and the intermittent outages under high winds will be a bad memory."

  Later on December 22, this information arrived:

  "I was on Harvard today when an Edison team arrived.  They believed that they have finally isolated the ongoing outage problem that occurs with the high winds.  I allowed them access to our phone and a repair crew has been dispatched.  This was around 3PM."

  Commercial power was restored to Wilson/Harvard at about 9:10 PM.  Time will tell if the "bugs" in the electric line have finally been ironed out.  Nevertheless, some stations will be topping off their generator fuel tanks early to be ready for anything, but this isn't as simple as it seems.  It's a long drive to Wilson and hardly worth the effort for a fuel delivery company unless two or more entities split the delivery bill.  So, a number of engineers are pulling together to make that happen and it is great to see this level of cooperation.

If there is one big lesson to be learned from all of this, it is that the backup power line to Wilson/Harvard needs to be built with the wires sufficiently separated that they will not slap together and short out in any windy conditions.  It would help if each of the Wilson/Harvard stakeholders made this point to Edison.

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