There will be a planned interruption of electric service in the Village of Greenport early Thursday morning. The interruption in service will begin at approximately 3 a.m. and is expected to last an hour or less for any one customer, according to a notice issued by village clerk Sylvia Pirillo this morning.
The service interruption is needed to accomplish the transfer of load from transformer two to transformer one, so that a state-mandated test can be conducted on transformer one.
The load was switched to transformer two after a power outage last summer that left village customers in the dark for 14 hours. Transformer one was energized two weeks ago for the first time since the outage, but it has not taken any load. An attempt to make the switch last Friday morning was unsuccessful but “the relays would not let the breakers hold it in place,” Mayor George Hubbard said in an interview last Friday morning.
The transfer can’t be done without shutting down the system due to a design flaw when the plant was upgraded, according to village officials. Until remediation work is completed, the generators can’t parallel with transformer one, village administrator Paul Pallas said. The village has brought a lawsuit in connection with the flawed design work, Hubbard said.
The village electric department must conduct a Demonstrated Maximum Net Capability test, which is required by the state, according to Pallas.
If all goes according to plan, no customer should be without power for much less than an hour. The switchover will be done in sections, with one of seven feeders at the plant turned off at a time, so the entire village will not be out at once.
Last week, one feeder was shut down for about an hour at 3 a.m., but problems with relays would not allow the planned transfer to transformer one — instead, an hour later, power was restored back on transformer two.
