BRISTOL. Va. – While much of the world counts down to the new year, Bristol Virginia Utilities is staging a countdown of its own – and this one affects whether customers can see the ball drop on TV.
At midnight on New Year’s Eve, BVU will again get its electricity from the Tennessee Valley Authority. After months of preparations, the switch from Appalachian Electric Power to TVA involves simultaneously flipping switches at two local substations, said Buddy Snodgrass, BVU’s vice president of operations.
"We’re connected to AEP at Wolf Hills and disconnected from AEP at North Bristol," Snodgrass said. "At midnight on Dec. 31 we’ll connect to TVA at North Bristol and disconnect from AEP at Wolf Hills. It’s a matter of opening a breaker and closing it back."
BVU officials have already tested the switching process this fall with no problems.
"You won’t be able to tell any difference," BVU President Wes Rosenbalm said.
Getting to the point for flipping the switches, however, has involved months of planning, work and some substantial expenditure.
BVU paid TVA $536,000 to design, procure and construct two new electric transmission line circuits. The utilities provider has also spent about $360,000 to remove a 35-year-old old transmission line.
"That started in July. Our contractors tore the line out and TVA’s contractors rebuilt our line back. They also added a 138-kilovolt transmission line from North Bristol to Wolf Hills," Snodgrass said.
The work included the double circuit and larger poles.
TVA also had to do significant work at the North Bristol substation, Snodgrass said.
At the Wolf Hills substation, BVU only had to add some metering equipment to the Wolf Hills station. That facility came online in 2004, when the city switched from Cinergy Corp. to AEP.
BVU previously obtained electricity from TVA, before switching to Cincinnati-based Cinergy in 1997.
"This is the third time I’ve done this, and the last time I’ll do it," Snodgrass said about manually switching providers on Monday night.
Leaving TVA involved considerably less work than returning, Snodgrass said, adding the switch to Cinergy merely involved switching meters.
"When we went from Cinergy to AEP, we had some work that had to be done at North Bristol that we’re now having to re-do to tie back in," Rosenbalm said. "We had to remove ourselves from the TVA system. Cinergy was using TVA’s transmission system and AEP was not."
A small amount of additional work remains.
"Rather than work on New Year’s Day, we’ll wait until Jan. 2 and disconnect from AEP at Wolf Hills and then connect TVA’s new transmission line and bring Wolf Hills back online," Snodgrass said.
AEP technicians will also disconnect their line and the entire process is expected to take an entire day.
Snodgrass previously said the change back to TVA was made for a couple of reasons – a long-term contract [20 years] other suppliers don’t offer and for reliability.
For BVU customers, the switch also involves another rate increase. To bring rates up to TVA’s levels, customers began paying the first part of a two-step increase in July. Another 7-8 percent average increase is planned for next July.
"We decided to do that in July so we didn’t hit everybody in January when its cold and they have higher usage," Rosenbalm said.
dmcgee@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2532
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