The transmission line normally provides all of the power for Keys Energy, the utility that serves from the Seven Mile Bridge to Key West.
"Those lines travel over water for a lot of the distance from here to the mainland. There's a lot of corrosion that happens. So it's just constant maintenance," said Julio Torrado, director of human resources and communications for the utility.
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One of the projects is replacing the aluminum static wire that runs along the top of the poles and protects the equipment below from lightning strikes. And that work requires turning off the transmission line. So the Lower Keys were being powered by the plant on Stock Island, normally used only in emergencies or when demand is really high.
In the first outage, last Thursday, a switch at the plant malfunctioned and took down power for everyone in the Lower Keys. Keys Energy decided to halt the work on the repairs and power up the transmission line. It was more than two hours before everyone got power again.
The second outage, on Monday, affected fewer people and was shorter and just required re-starting one of the generation units at the local plant.
Torrado says he sees the comments on social media from frustrated customers who can't conduct business or have other issues with the power outages. He said he believes many of them are from people who moved here from places with multiple transmission lines, so if something fails, you never realize it because a backup kicks in.
"In our case, we have that one extension cord that connects us to the mainland," he said. "And it takes a sailboat or an osprey or an iguana or, you know, just a malfunctioning piece of equipment that knocks everyone offline."
Keys Energy is planning more work using helicopters to repair equipment at the top of the poles — but Torrado said the transmission line will stay on throughout that work.
The cold weather is an advantage in scheduling work that requires turning off the transmission line. Torrado said current power demand is about half of what it is in the summer, when everyone in the Keys is using their air conditioners.
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