Fast Work Restores 500 kV Transmission Line in Louisiana

10/30/2006

At 7:30 AM on October 19, violent weather tripped Entergy’s Line 620, the 500 kV transmission line between the Nelson plant and Richard in Louisiana.

Entergy operations coordinator Charles Berry, based in Lake Charles, dispatched a Pike crew to patrol the line and determine the cause of the outage.

Shortly thereafter, Berry received reports of a downed structure near Jennings, Louisiana. The patrol next reported a second downed transmission tower in  that area.

Quick Response

Working with Entergy’s Mississippi grid personnel, Entergy transmission engineer II James Nicholson quickly coordinated transport of replacement structures for the damaged towers.

The first replacement structure arrived on site October 20, with the second replacement arriving on site the following day.

Working in Difficult Terrain

This job’s challenges included more than ordinary logistics. Both damaged structures were in separate flooded rice fields.

Thursday afternoon, the same day the violent weather downed the two structures, crews began arriving at the job site and immediately starting inspecting the adjacent structures for damage and grounding the line.

Working Fast and Safe

 Friday morning, October 20 transmission operations coordinator Michael Saucier arrived at the job site with additional Pike repair crews from Texas. The crews laid mats in the flooded rice fields to create a safe work surface on which they could remove the damaged structures and erect their replacements.

Saturday October 21 the crews began vibrating the pilings for the first replacement structure, Structure 213 and began setting the poles for the 130’ tall tubular steel h-frames. While two crews worked to get the first structure up, the other two crews began laying mats at the more difficult to access second structure, 207. 

Less than Five Days Start to Finish

Sunday morning the 22nd  Structure 213 was completed. Those crews moved to help with replacing Structure 207 continued to gain access to structure 207. On Monday October 23 all crews worked on structure 207 and completed erecting the structure that evening.

The line went back in service a few minutes after 5 PM on Monday October 23.