The next step in a five-year utility improvement process is wrapping up on Church Street.
Work on Church Street’s power infrastructure is about one-third of the way through, Wrangell Municipal Light and Power superintendent Clay Hammer reported. “It’s the tough third,” Hammer added, serving the library and post office, as well as feeding much of the residences up the hill from them.
Over the weekend the city collaborated with telecoms provider GCI to reroute the last of its cables on the street underground. The weighty cables have built up on power poles over the years, contributing to overburdening. City staff excavated the sections ahead of time, allowing for the private company to make a quick reinstallation.
“They knocked it out in a couple of hours,” Hammer said of the GCI crew.
The old pole in the center of the sidewalk near Rooney’s Roost will also be removed, allowing freer access on the pavement. Asphalt and concrete work was expected to be done there shortly, bringing the first phase of Church Street improvements to an end.
“We can finally close the door on that section,” said Hammer.
Initially work was intended to continue along the street as far as radio station KSTK, but a review of the infrastructure along Cow Alley showed that was in “poor enough” condition to bump up in priority. Some pole replacements and reconfigurations are already prepared along the route, and temporary fiberglass arms are bearing some of the alley’s load.
Hammer expects that project to be complete by the end of July, though the department will have to work around a smaller crew. Vacations and pauses for monthly meter readings saps on staff during the summers, typically.
Another thing to consider is increased summertime demand as seafood processors ramp up production at their plants. Hammer explained his department tries to schedule around that time, which with wintertime demands means it has only a couple of windows really in which to work each year. That doesn’t mean crews have to wait idle, however.
“We can do a lot of the prep work ahead of it,” he said.
Work replacing the poles on the latest section of Church Street began last fall, and is one of the fixes prescribed in a five-year plan prepared for the city by Electric Power Systems in 2015. The report found most of the borough’s utility poles have reached or surpassed their life expectancy and recommended phased replacement. Half are more than 40 years old, with an additional 30 percent of poles over 30 years old.
A plan acting on this assessment put forward by WMLP was approved by the Borough Assembly in March last year.
“Currently it is going very, very well,” said Hammer.
Costs estimated by the assessment were in the millions of dollars, with sectioned phasing meant to make projects more fiscally manageable. Hammer noted that actual implementation of some of the fixes has brought down some costs significantly.
Identified as another need by the plan, over the summer work replacing the H-structure connecting Wrangell’s grid with Southeast Alaska Power Agency’s transmission lines was completed, with costs to replace the unit obtained from SEAPA.
Future projects will include finishing Church Street’s pole replacement, resiting poles along Case Avenue, then updating the infrastructure from the Zimovia Highway substation to Bennett Street.
Most expensive, at the end of the list of infrastructural priorities by 2022 is additional generation capacity. The EPS study anticipated an additional 2.5 to 3.5 megawatts of backup generation capacity will be needed to support demand, due to increases in energy usage since 2005.
“There’s been growing winter load of late,” Hammer explained.
Colder than any over the past five years, the latest winter was a good indicator for the department of what seasonable loads can look like. Wrangell’s power generation could still keep up with that demand, he said, in large part because of significant transitions back to diesel heat by the high school and Nolan Center.
“We just don’t have a lot of wiggle room there,” Hammer observed.
A new generator wouldn’t come cheap; a 3 MW standby generator could cost between $2.2 million and $2.7 million, though comparable diesel generators do occasionally show up on the market for considerably less.
As the project continues, Hammer expressed his appreciation for residents’ patience. A number of planned outages have been undertaken during the course of the work, which at times can be inconvenient. Looking ahead though, he pointed out the project will hopefully prevent unplanned outages, which can be longer lasting and even less convenient.
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