Work completed on new transformer for North Shore

The Brockway substation in Kings Beach was switched back into service Tuesday evening at 8:00 p.m. The 50+ year old substation had been temporarily shut down for necessary repairs due to damage sustained during this year’s winter storms.

A new transformer was installed to replace equipment that had caught on fire during extreme weather experienced in the Lake Tahoe region in January and February "Snowmegeddon."

While the substation was being repaired, Liberty Utilities’ relied on service taken from NV Energy’s source in the Incline Village area to serve its Kings Beach customers. Unfortunately, NV Energy had a major equipment failure of that circuit last week which affected Liberty Utilities’ customers with an extended outage.

“Completion of the Brockway substation repairs brings the system in North Lake Tahoe back to full strength just ahead of this week’s incoming storm,” notes Travis Johnson, Liberty Utilities’ VP of Electric Operations. “Circuit exposure--the total length of the power line--is now significantly reduced since we’re now serving our Kings Beach / N. Tahoe customers directly from the Brockway substation instead of from Incline, Northstar and Tahoe City as before.”

Johnson added that these repairs will make outages less frequent and affect fewer customers when an outage does occur. However, he also cautioned that Liberty was unable to make the most optimal improvements to reduce winter-time outages as it has not received approval of its request to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to do so.

“After the Brockway substation failed during Snowmegeddon, we asked the CPUC for approval to proceed with our long-range plan to retire the old Brockway sub and make significant improvements to the nearby Kings Beach substation to carry the entire load,” Johnson added. “Unfortunately, we have not received that authority yet but we are hopeful we will soon and can make the permanent improvements in time for the 2018-19 winter season.”

“In the meantime, these repairs should greatly improve service reliability to the Kings Beacharea,” Johnson said. “We thank our customers for their patience as we addressed this issue.”