Winter’s sudden arrival brings power outages

“Winter hit all of a sudden when fall wasn’t quite done,” says Jean Matt, general manager of Mission Valley Power, of the storm that left a portion of Polson without power for three hours last Wednesday morning.

As a consequence, wet heavy snow weighed down trees that still had leaves, which led laden branches to drop on power lines, blowing protective fuses and triggering outages.

“We’ve got power out all over the place,” said MVP’s Steve Miller as his crew lopped branches from a big maple draped over a downtown alley. “It’s going to be a long day.”

And as winter blasted in, customers were suddenly turning up the heat, causing even more stress on the system. “People turned heat on all at once,” said Matt. “If we have any weakness in the system, we find it.”

He said outages were reported beginning at 5 a.m. Wednesday as the storm moved north, and MVP crews were busy restoring power into the evening. Especially hard hit were Polson and Pablo, although he noted that outages were system-wide, and lasted anywhere from 10 minutes to three hours.

That’s far shorter than the Flathead Valley, where Flathead Electric was still restoring power to rural users this weekend.

Meter and transformer shortages

Matt said that delays in the supply chain have also stressed the reservation-wide utility system. In the two years since the COVID pandemic started, MVP has had a shortage of meters and transformers, forcing it to postpone electrical service to new residential starts for up to six months.

“There are definitely industry-wide shortages in equipment,” Matt said. The lead time for equipment that relies on electronic components, especially semiconductors that are largely built overseas, has gone from 6-8 weeks to 24-36 months. Overall, the utility monitors 24,000 meters in a system that delivers power to 20,000 customers.

Even with equipment shortages, MVP hit a 15-year high for installing new services this year.

Meters were initially prioritized for existing customers “since they’re the ones that help build our system by paying bills each month.”

“If someone came in two months ago and wanted to sign up for power we were telling them to get on the list, that it might take six months,” says Matt. But a recent shipment has allowed MVP to contact many of the people on the waiting list and say, “we’re ready to get you started if you have all your stuff ready.”

A shortage in transformers has also posed challenges, since those parts can take up to three years to receive. “It’s made the planning for long-range maintenance projects a lot more difficult.”

The delays have also forced MVP managers to reconsider “how we do business so we cannot only serve new demand but serve existing demand too. It’s made us have to predict further out instead of year to year, especially for long-range deferred maintenance projects.”

“MVP is evolving and learning how to still serve the folks out there without having any hiccups,” he adds. “But we’re not in charge of Mother Nature so that storm yesterday, I don’t consider it too much of a hiccup on our end. It was just cause and effect.”

Hydropower and conservation

MVP is a federally-owned distribution utility operated and maintained by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. Virtually all of the power used on the reservation is supplied from dams operated by the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), with a portion also coming from Seli'š Ksanka Qlispe' (SKQ) Dam.

A miniscule amount also comes from residential solar, with homeowners typically generating enough power to feed the grid during the summer and purchasing electricity during the overcast winter months. None of the power is sourced from coal or natural gas plants.

MVP also offers several conservation programs, administered through BPA. These include rebates for everything from replacing single-pane windows, adding insulation and weatherproofing, to purchasing energy-efficient appliances and water heaters and installing heat pumps and water heaters. To learn more, visit missionvalleypower.org/conservation-forms/.