Extreme heat causes power outages in Bullhead City, Mohave Valley

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Extreme heat causes power outages in Bullhead City, Mohave Valley

BULLHEAD CITY - Bullhead City and Mohave Valley residents had power outages Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

The outages lasted between 15 minutes and one hour, according to Mohave Electric Cooperative (MEC). They were a "result of high temperatures throughout the area that caused transformers to fail," according to MEC.

"It's just the nature of the beast," said Tom Longtin, MEC operations manager. "When sudden extreme heat soars, accompanied by high humidity, it places extra stress on equipment, resulting in nuisance outages like these.

"The first real stress on the system for the summer intensifies dormant weak points in transformers that otherwise lay hidden and unstrained over the cooler months, much like a car radiator hose that breaks in the first real heat it experiences for the season."

MEC began hitting its peak for June starting Thursday, climbing 20 megawatts over the next three days, according to the cooperative.

This magnified the problem, according to Mohave Electric Cooperative.

"Our crews are on top of the situation and taking steps to handle all outages as quickly as possible," wrote Judith Allan, MEC public affairs coordinator.

The Western Arizona Regional Medical Center, which had three power outages over the weekend, said the outages did not affect its patient care areas.

An outage Saturday lasted 35 minutes. Sunday had two outages, one for 45 minutes and another for 15.

"Any of the patient care areas and necessary support areas are run by an emergency generator," said Ruth Padilla, hospital spokeswoman.

http://www.mohavedailynews.com/display/inn_news/news6.txt

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), July 03, 2001


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