Sunday, August 31, 1997

WTU employee get a charge from his work

By BRIAN BETHEL / Abilene Reporter-News

Alertly scanning a glimmering array of computer monitors, Mark Skipper's face darkens briefly as a siren sounds.

Glancing quickly at one of the screens, Skipper, a system dispatcher for West Texas Utilities, announces that Coleman, Texas, is officially in the dark.

"We're showing zero voltage on all three of the breakers here, and we're also at zero megawatts across the breakers," he says. "There's something wrong."

For a little more than 11 years, Skipper has spent many long days and nights making certain the 170 towns served by the electricity provider have current flowing to them 24 hours a day.

Tonight, he's working the late shift, and he and fellow workers have to figure out the best way to restore power to citizens there.

As his monitoring equipment pinpoints the offending breaker, he explains that because there's no rain, the problem could be anything from a creature caught in the works to a bad transformer gumming up the works.

"We can pinpoint where the fault is fairly easily," he said. "We isolate the problems, troubleshoot them, and then send crews to fix them."

His is a world of data, monitoring voltage, the way power flows through the system, how efficiently everything is operating -- and of course, whether or not there's a problem.

A call to a service man in Santa Anna sets the repair process in motion.

"The main problems we have are with thunderstorms," Skipper said. "Fog and ice also cause us some problems. Dust collects on the insulators, and then if a fog bank comes in, for example, the fog actually acts as a conductor."

The fog can create an arc of electricity between the insulator and a nearby cross arm, meaning the arm can eventually catch fire. The line falls, and the power goes out.

Weather monitoring equipment helps Skipper and others anticipate problems caused by the elements before they happen.

A huge television mounted on the wall, when not tuned to the Weather Channel, doubles as a satellite link that updates every five minutes.

Skipper and his fellow dispatchers work a rotating shift, which means that while they're often on in the day, they're every bit as often working at night.

It takes some adjustment, he admits.

"Sometimes you do get tired," he said. "But eventually you learn how to adjust. I've been doing this for a while, so it's not that big of a deal."

The work is always interesting, he said. In many ways, each new outage is like solving a puzzle.

"There's so many scenarios," he said. "You have to be prepared for any eventuality. Anything can cause a problem, really."

In his time as a dispatcher, Skipper has seen power knocked out by everything from low-flying crop dusters to auto accidents to squirrels.

A big part of successfully doing his job is the help he gets from those actually in the field, he said.

"The dedication from the people in the field really makes it worthwhile," he said. "They do an incredible job of restoring service. We all work together."

Power is something people want day and night, Skipper said. And while he and his fellow employees are on the job -- day and night -- WTU's customers have little need to fear the dark.

But when the darkness comes, they know. And it's not just monitors that tell them.

"You'd be amazed at how many people are up at 3 a.m.," he said. "When the power goes out late at night, you find out how many of them they are."