Hesperia is a little village in west Michigan, like many others. Its roots go back to the logging boom of the 1800s, but the only remnant of that era is the White River running through it, which powered the lumber mills of yesteryear. Hesperia is quiet like many of Michigan’s former logging towns, and it’s home to a Wolverine distribution substation we operate for Great Lakes Energy.
I traveled this week to observe Wolverine linemen and substation technicians perform tests on the Hesperia distribution transformer. The transformer, although new by utility standards, matches the type which failed recently and caused an outage for Great Lakes. Wolverine has seven of these transformers we need to test to make sure we don’t have other failures caused by the same problem.
I watched Ben Balcom and Dave Stieg, led by Ed Straathof, connect the mobile high-side cables to the Hesperia substation low side, then parallel the mobile transformer, and finally transfer the load entirely to the mobile and de-energize the substation high side. It’s a complicated set of steps and I enjoyed watching our crews work.
Next up, Wolverine substation technicians, Brian Wolak and John Martz, tested and inspected the suspect transformer. They performed tests and minor maintenance on the regulators too. They were patient with my questions as they walked through their tests and explained the results.
The job wrapped up by essentially reversing all the steps taken to de-energize the substation high side. Once that was completed, they disconnected the mobile high side from the transmission grid, removed the temporary fencing, and prepped the fence trailer and high-side trailer for transport to its next job site.
The job was a pretty routine procedure for our crews. It required a lot of coordination, preparation, and equipment — a costly, but necessary, job for a two-hour set of tests done in the name of member reliability.
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