PULLMAN Wash. — A series of electrical power interruptions and shutdowns
will affect a majority of the buildings on the Washington State University
campus west of Olympia Avenue and Stadium Way. The planned outages will
take place during the semester break period from Dec. 18, 1999 through Jan. 8,
2000.
These interruptions are needed for critical repairs, upgrades and maintenance
of electrical distribution facilities, says Craig Benjamin, assistant director of
WSU’s Department of Facilities Operations.
Three different activities will be occurring:
— Avista Utilities will be installing and connecting a temporary substation to
the east buss of the power plant, which serves energy to 15 feeders on the hill.
This shutdown is necessary to avoid a catastrophic failure of Avista’s
permanent transformer, which is showing signs of internal problems.
— New electrical cable duct banks have been installed in Stadium Way.
Selected buildings will be affected by shutdowns of 4 to 4 ½ hours to allow
connection of those buildings to feeders in the ducts.
— There is a need to clean and recalibrate the breakers for each of the 24
feeders to the main portion of the west area of campus. These breakers are
located in the main power plant and will require disruption of power to various
buildings for periods of 20 minutes to 6 hours.
Individual shutdown notices have been provided to the departments in the
affected buildings that will experience shutdowns on Dec. 18, 19, 23, 28, Jan. 4
and 8.
These interruptions should enable Facilities Operations to provide reliable
electrical power to the main campus.
This work is not related to precautionary Y2K outages that are planned for
Dec. 31 and Jan. 1.
Hi213-99
