Truckee Donner PUD Recovers from Significant Winter Storms

TRUCKEE, CA, Jan. 18, 2017 – The greater Truckee community continues to respond to a series of severe winter storms that forced the Town of Truckee to declare a state-of-emergency and caused power outages, traffic delays, school closures, falling trees and flooding.  This historic series of storms started on Jan. 4 and lasted through Jan. 12.

Truckee Donner Public Utility District’s (TDPUD) electric crews have been working day and night to restore power as quickly as possible and to keep our community safe. Due to the severity of the damage, TDPUD put out a mutual aid request and received help from Roseville Electric Utility and Plumas Sierra Rural Electric; both sister publicly-owned electric utilities.

Thanks to tireless work by the electric crews, TDPUD was able to largely repair the electric distribution system by Saturday morning Jan. 14 restoring power to all but 100 individual customers with damage to their homes’ power feed. As of Jan. 17, all but 20 customers had power with the remaining outages requiring repairs by the home owner before TDPUD can restore power.

“Truckee Donner PUD’s electric crews have worked day and night to restore power to our customers while working in very challenging conditions,” said TDPUD electric utility and assistant general manager Stephen Hollabaugh. “We were able to repair our electric distribution system relatively quickly and are now working on individual homes with damage to their power feeds.”

The main causes of power outages and transients have been frozen snow on power lines, falling trees and limbs, and NV Energy transmission outages. TDPUD crews have been able to minimize outage times by isolating the cause of the outage and using switching gear to restore power from other parts of the electric distribution system.

Over the eight-plus day time-period, the TDPUD experienced over 46,000 customer interruptions. The most severe days were Jan. 4 (4,837 customers out of power), Jan. 7 (6,569 customer out of power), and Jan. 10-11 (all 13,249 customers out of power due to an NV Energy transmission outage). In total, the TDPUD responded to almost 3,000 outage calls from customers regarding almost 400 total outage incidents.

Thanks to the valiant efforts of the electric crews, TDPUD’s electric distribution system is up and running and almost all customers have power. There is another series of wet, snowy, and windy storms forecast to start Jan. 18 and continue through the weekend. TDPUD reminds everyone to be safe and prepared.

The TDPUD is a non-profit, publicly owned utility agency created in 1927 and overseen by a locally elected board of directors. TDPUD provides the greater Truckee area with reliable and high quality water and power services while guiding the community to conserve resources. For more information about the TDPUD, call 530-587-3896 or visit www.tdpud.org.