High school graduation is an especially joyous occasion in a small
town. In 2005, however, the ceremony in Nogales took a dark turn.
Literally.
Power went out during the outdoor evening event, and megaphones had
to be used by the various speakers. As a result, the graduates’ names
couldn’t be heard as they crossed the stage to receive their
diplomas.
“We’re very proud of them,” the Nogales International newspaper (which, like the Tucson Weekly, is owned by Wick
Communications) quoted school principal Mark Valenzuela as saying about
the graduating seniors. “It was kind of frustrating for them, but they
hung in there.”
All of the residents of Nogales have been hanging in there,
suffering for years from periodic extended blackouts due to a lack of
electrical redundancy. Only one major transmission line now runs south
to Nogales, from near Vail east of Tucson. Carrying 115 kilovolts of
power, the line serves much of Santa Cruz County.
Natural-gas-powered turbines in Nogales provide a limited backup,
but if the turbines aren’t working, Nogales can be left without
electricity when the transmission line goes out of service. That’s
exactly what happened during the graduation ceremony: A storm knocked
out the power line, so parts of Santa Cruz County were dark for several
hours.
This power-outage problem and lack of electrical redundancy for the
border region has been recognized for more than a decade. In 1998, the
city of Nogales filed a complaint about power outages with the Arizona
Corporation Commission (ACC). In response, the ACC ordered Citizens
Utilities Company, which then supplied electricity to Nogales, to
install a second transmission line by the end of 2003.
“The bottom line,” the local chamber of commerce commented in a 2001
letter, “(is that) Nogales and Santa Cruz County needs new and reliable
power sources, and soon.”
A 2001 study looked at the Nogales power supply and, according to a
story in the International, concluded: “Stabilized delivery of
electric power would greatly improve opportunities for new industry and
commerce.”
But the matter of getting a second power line to Nogales soon became
extremely complicated. Citizens in 2003 was acquired by UniSource
Energy Services, which then assumed responsibility for meeting the ACC
requirement.
By that time, UniSource, the parent company of Tucson Electric
Power, had indicated to the ACC that it wanted to run a 345-kilovolt
line to the border city. This line would also provide power to the
potentially lucrative electrical market of Sonora, Mexico.
The route selected for UniSource’s new 150-foot towers ran west of
Interstate 19, cutting through the Coronado National Forest. While the
ACC supported this idea, the U.S. Forest Service and many area
residents did not. (See Tim Vanderpool’s accompanying story on Page
15.)
“That project’s in limbo,” comments Joe Salkowski, a spokesman for
UniSource, about the controversial 345-kilovolt proposal. “We’re the
innocent babies in this situation.”
The ACC apparently isn’t pressuring UniSource to install a second
transmission line to Nogales. Instead, since a 2004 decision which
required the company to make some other improvements to the Nogales
electrical system, the mandate for implementing the second line has
been on hold.
UniSource has now applied to upgrade its existing line to Nogales in
order to meet more of the current electrical needs of the community,
although the company does not suggest that the upgrade is an
alternative to the 345-kilovolt proposal. The 138-kilovolt upgrade
would follow basically the same route as the present 115-kilovolt
transmission line, but UniSource will replace its existing wooden poles
with 70- to 85-foot-high steel monopoles.
“The situation is not one of outages,” Salkowski says of the
application, “as much as long-term reliability.” He says that the
existing line can only supply about two-thirds of the peak power load
demanded in Nogales, and adds that additional use of the turbines is
not economically ideal for electrical customers.
“It will give us more flexibility in terms of system reliability,”
Salkowski says about the proposed upgrade. He adds that any rate
impacts which result from the construction project “are not going to be
dramatic.”
While Salkowski does not offer specific figures for power outages in
Santa Cruz County, Salkowski does provide a general comparison with
Tucson.
“Tucson benefits from multiple connections to the (national) power
grid,” he says, “so it has more redundancy than Santa Cruz County.”
In any case, the current application leaves the issue of the
ACC-required second transmission line to Nogales unresolved.
“The upgrade was seen as something the company could do more
quickly, along with installing new turbines a few years ago,” Salkowski
explains.
That explanation may not offer much consolation to the 16,000
UniSource customers in Santa Cruz County who lost power for a few hours
the night before Thanksgiving last year. One of those most impacted by
this loss of power was Flavio Gonzalez, the utility director for the
city of Nogales. He remembers the extended outage made his job “kind of
interesting.”
Indicating that he always tries to provide double-coverage for
things he deals with, Gonzalez believes UniSource should do the
same.
“This situation has been going on for years,” Gonzalez says about
electrical outages. “It behooves (UniSource) to invest the money to
take care of their responsibilities.”
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 3, 2009.