University remains lit during storms

Many thunderstorms have struck the southeast Michigan area in the past few weeks, causing electrical outages for thousands. But through it all, the central and medical campuses only have experienced an occasional, small power bump. This successful record continued despite an occurrence July 6 that was described as a "once in a lifetime" event.

"One of the major Detroit Edison substations in Ann Arbor went down because of a lightning strike," says Richard Wickboldt, manager of U-M's Central Power Plant. "We have three transformer feeders from DTE at the Power Plant, and we lost two of the three feeders because of the substation outage."

While the co-generating Central Power Plant produces roughly half of the electricity needs for the central and medical campuses as it produces steam for heating and cooling, continuous electricity from DTE is vital to campus operations. Losing two of the three feeders from DTE was very significant and could have been dangerous if the ensuing loads weren't balanced properly.

"This never had occurred before," Wickboldt says. "However, our operators were able to crank up all of our turbines, turn on the balancing condensers to capture additional steam to recycle back to produce more of our own electricity, and continuously balance the electrical loads while moving throughout our plant to re-set our own equipment that was tripped with the feeder outages."

Plant Operations Director Richard Robben was pleased with the teamwork that turned a negative event into a positive result. "Keeping the campus lit through this extraordinary circumstance is a testament to the commitment the University has made to train employees and provide the right equipment to enable us to meet the needs of our community in supplying cost-effective, reliable power," he says.

Robben and Wickboldt were quick to praise the utilities master planning efforts from previous administrators as well as the employees who have worked to maintain the Power Plant equipment—some of which is 20 or 30 years old—and the operators on duty that day.

The event, which lasted more than two hours, occurred during a shift change at the Power Plant. As a result, the three men from the departing shift stayed on to help address the emergency they've dubbed "Independence Day Eye of the Storm 2003."

"Six men scrambled to keep the labs, offices and buildings on central and medical campus lit," Wickboldt says. "Gerald Avery, Jeffrey Craigie, Ronald Nichols, Steven Oerther, Danny Porter and Mark Stevenson successfully worked through a difficult situation with no negative impact on the rest of campus. We're very proud of the operators' professional response."

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