With an underground electric system that sustained only minor impact from the recent storm, Sioux Center Municipal Utilities was able to send linemen to help restore power in two neighboring communities.
The July 28 storm uprooted trees, damaged buildings, and snapped electric poles as it swept through the region, but only a portion of Sioux Center Municipal Utilities customers had about a four-minute interruption of power. The feed to a Sioux Center substation from a Northwest Iowa Power Cooperative transmission line was briefly down due to a broken pole near town. However, NIPCO was able to reroute power through its transmission system, and Sioux Center has multiple links to NIPCO for reliability, so power was quickly restored.
“I’m super thankful for our system here and our partnership with NIPCO as well,” Sioux Center Electric Department Head Ezra Weikert said. “To withstand that type of wind and have no big outages is remarkable.”
Sioux Center’s underground electric lines also made clearing debris after the storm safer and swifter.
“Having no downed power lines allowed us to get to cleanup right away,” Weikert said.
With minimal impact to the Sioux Center Municipal Utilities’ electric system, Sioux Center linemen were available to assist fellow municipal utilities Alton and Paullina with storm recovery.
“I’m proud of the guys for being willing and able to help other communities. We were able to lend expertise and support to get them back online,” Weikert said.
The night of the storm, Alton requested mutual aid to help repair a transmission line. The Sioux Center crew was joined by Orange City linemen and provided technical assistance in repairing the affected pole and line to restore power within several hours.
After returning to Sioux Center for a short night, the electric department received a second request for mutual aid. The Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities was requesting crews with a bucket truck and digger truck to restore power in Paullina. Three Sioux Center linemen traveled there with two trucks to help restore power.
“Our guys worked on backyard overhead lines, replacing poles, fixing transformers, splicing wire for the duration until power was restored there,” Weikert said.