Winter storms that dumped heavy, wet snow on Northern Nevada knocked out power to almost 124,000 NV Energy customers over the New Year’s holiday weekend, according to a report from the utility.
The outages reached a peak around 8 p.m. on Dec. 31, when 89,378 customers were without power, NV Energy said in a report filed with the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada. And 8,000 customers still didn’t have power on Jan. 3, according to PUCN.
NV Energy filed the report on Wednesday in response to an order from PUCN. The commission opened a docket on Jan. 3 to investigate the causes of the outages and the utility’s response.
In its report, NV Energy said “extreme weather” caused the outages.
“The storm was a very long-duration, atmospheric river storm that affected the entire region of Northern Nevada with heavy precipitation in the form of heavy, wet snow,” the report said.
Storm-related damage occurred across most western Nevada valleys and at Lake Tahoe, as tree branches snapped and snow piled up on power lines and equipment.
NV Energy dealt with 765 separate outages impacting an estimated 123,879 customers from Dec. 30 to Jan. 5. Twenty-nine of the outages were momentary, and the remainder were prolonged.
The outages mainly involved the distribution system and were caused by blown fuses, downed wires, broken poles, and damaged transformers and pole line hardware. In addition, downed wires and damaged structures caused some transmission-level outages, the utility said.
NV Energy worked to first address outages affecting the largest number of customers. As power was restored to many customers, the focus shifted to customers who had been without power for the longest time.
On Jan. 4, NV Energy made direct calls to 614 residential customers who had been without power for more than 48 hours, offering free lodging at a local hotel and checking to see if they needed water for livestock.
The utility also communicated with customers through the news media, its website and social media.
NV Energy initially dispatched four of its own crews to repair the outages on Dec. 31. Additional crews were then brought in from other parts of the state, along with seven contract crews, for a total of 18 crews on Jan. 2. A typical crew consists of four or five linemen.
In addition to the crews, the response included troubleshooters, fire crews for snow and debris removal, and NV Energy’s crisis and incident management teams.
