Preparing for the future: Transmission crews reflect on last year’s winter storm damage

In January 2024, the Pacific Northwest experienced an ice storm that threatened the region's power grid. The Bonneville Power Administration responded rapidly, sending out Transmission Field Services crews throughout its service territory to repair high-voltage transmission lines and restore power service to customers. BPA's field teams based out of Alvey Maintenance Headquarters near Eugene, Oregon, witnessed particularly significant damage across Lane County.

Over a year later, Alvey personnel are reflecting on successes, lessons learned and operational changes prompted by weathering the storm.

“For Alvey, it was a micro-targeted ice storm," said Chris Meloy, Alvey chief substation operator. “It did so much damage in a small geographic area. That's challenging on the population and the local utilities BPA serves."

During extreme weather events, BPA's storm and wildfire response protocols designate different responses that depend on the event's scale.

“In this case, four South Region districts were impacted," said Rob Robertsen, Transmission Operations and Maintenance manager. “That's when we shifted from a district-level response to a regional response."

Robertsen served as the incident commander for the ice storm event and implemented an Incident Management Team that coordinated with district managers in the South Region. The IMT also collaborated with BPA dispatchers to ensure effective communication with affected districts as they worked to identify solutions and meet their unique needs.

“It's all about relieving folks," Robertsen said. “You're working with district managers to get their needs met."

For example, districts could hand off supply requests to the IMT so they could instead focus on more exigent problems.

In the Eugene District, Meloy said the quick response from the rest of the agency, including the support of field crews stationed outside of the Alvey area, contributed to efficient recovery and repair efforts. The IMT worked closely with district support staff to ensure incoming field crews had nearby lodging and appropriate resources.

Alvey personnel also communicated with local utilities to identify and address immediate problems while prioritizing field crew safety.

“We have great relationships with the local utilities," Meloy said. “It improves communication during these extreme weather events."

In the field, Meloy said BPA was able to communicate the status of their field crews with utilities and align deployment strategies depending on the weather conditions.

“There were periods of time where the best thing we could do for the power system and our customers was to retreat, regroup and wait for the conditions to stabilize until it was safe to resume restoration efforts," he said.

With good communication across support groups, Meloy said most of the problems came directly from the unpredictability of the weather itself.

“During an active storm, we'd have crews remove a tree from a line, restore power to that line and then have a tree come down and knock the line out of service," he said.

To counteract these obstacles, crews applied temporary fixes to restore service as soon as possible.

“We did employ temporary repair measures to get lines back intact and into service," Meloy said. “It was the right decision, and we we're able to perform permanent repairs later in the year."

After the storm, Robertsen and Dale Coulombe, Alvey Operations and Maintenance manager, helped conduct three briefings for the Alvey district, transmission line maintenance crews and upper management to highlight successes, lessons learned and areas for improvement.

From a regional response standpoint, Robertsen said there will always be challenges finding accommodation for incoming crews.

“When a community is out of power, the first thing they're going to want to do is find hotels with power," he said. “We need to work on finding those accommodations a little sooner."

With the district, Coulombe and Meloy said work is being done to improve the amount of certain resources on hand – including food, fuel and other supplies.

As the district reviews its response, Coulombe said work is being done to implement new tools and real-time reporting techniques into a district-wide extreme weather response.

“We were prepared for these events," Coulombe said. “But we also want to improve in preparation for the next event."