Shortly after sunrise on Saturday, August 9, the entire Village of Newberry and many surrounding buildings lost power. The 7 a.m. outage was caused by the sudden failure of the village’s sole transformer, which disabled the entire substation that feeds power to the grid.
It was an unexpected outage, said Village Manager Allison Watkins, and the first time the transformer failed in the history of Newberry Water and Light.
“The substation going down is unprecedented,” Watkins said. “If a power line goes down, we have all the things we need to rebuild that. But a substation transformer going down is just unprecedented. We have been servicing them and maintaining them as we should. It has completely taken us by surprise.”
Watkins initially announced that the outage may go on for days, though that worst-case scenario didn’t materialize; power flickered back on at 12:25 a.m. on August 10.
Re-establishing power took enormous effort. Water and Light Supervisor Dan Kucinskas evaluated the situation and worked with Watkins to implement the contingency plan for long-term power outages. MacAllister Machinery in Novi was contacted to haul a rented portable substation to Newberry, and the caravan of big trucks arrived before dark.
A work crew traveled with the portable units and got right to work setting them up to bypass the village substation transformer. Lights came back on just hours later.
Meanwhile, village residents limped through the day with running water but no power. Rahilly’s IGA assessed the situation and announced just before noon that they would give away their thawing frozen goods and warming deli products.
Living Water Assembly of God church welcomed people to shelter there and even provided food and water. The Village of Newberry office still had power, supplied by a generator, and welcomed residents to cool off or charge electronics there. Temperatures were expected to reach 86 that day; an afternoon thunderstorm brought clouds and cooler weather.
The Village doesn’t yet know what caused the transformer to fail. Analysis of the unit, expected to be completed on Thursday, will reveal whether the transformer can be repaired or if it must be replaced. A new transformer is expected to cost between $500,000 to $1 million.
Renting the portable substation is plenty expensive, too. Watkins said renting the current set-up costs $48,000 per week.
“At this time, we don’t know how long we need them, but we are hoping not too long,” she said. The electric fund, which includes funds set aside for infrastructure, is covering the cost.
“We have enough cushion in our capital budget to pay for the generators and all of this that’s going on right now,” Watkins said.
The fund doesn’t have enough to pay cash for a new transformer, she said, if the Village ends up needing one.
Newberry residents experienced a second, shorter outage on Monday afternoon. Power blinked out again at 4:35 p.m. due to a clogged fuel filter on one of the rented generators that are powering the portage substation. With one generator down, the second generator couldn’t shoulder the electric load, and town went dark again. Power came back on at 5:21 p.m. after the fuel filter was replaced.
** Update: Shared information regarding outage, and causes of power outages on August 9 and August 11.
“I understand completely that people are anxious and worried,” she said. “When you’re using generated power like we are, outages are not expected, but they’re not out of the ordinary. If there’s going to be an outage that we plan, we will give folks plenty of heads up. If the power just goes out without advance notice from us, then an unexpected generator fault has occurred, and we will work immediately to get things running again.”
Water and Light customers may notice a slight reduction in their next monthly bill. Because their electricity usage is metered, customers will not be charged for hours when their home was not using any electricity. The village will not reimburse residents for food that may have spoiled during the outage.
Watkins expressed gratitude to the many people and organizations that assisted during the outage, saying it made her very proud to be part of this community.
“Pentland Township reached out immediately,” Watkins said. “AJ Downey, Water Superintendent, was on his way to camp with his kids, turned around and came back, which was fantastic.”
Pentland Township quickly loaned the Village their backup generator to provide support to the Village well so customers wouldn’t lose water. Water service had briefly failed after the outage, when the new generator that supports the water well faulted. The new unit had been tested, but never relied upon before, and was apparently struggling to get enough fuel.
