Burnet City Council recently approved a contract with the Lower Colorado River Authority to evaluate the city’s electric distribution system for possible operational deficiencies and to recommend necessary system improvements.
According to City Manager David Vaughn, the agreement is a routine system deficiency study.
“We do it with them (LCRA) on a regular basis,” Vaughn says. LCRA
LCRA plans to charge the city more than $119,000 over five years for the comprehensive study, scheduled to start Jan. 1, 2023.
The services agreement calls for LCRA engineers to inspect power transformers, distribution circuits, substation capacity, disconnect switches, as well as several more components, to determine what may need or might not need reconductoring or reconstruction.
Also, the study will include visual inspections of the city’s cable and telephone poles, which total more than 3,300.
LCRA inspectors will look for tree limbs resting on lines, limbs growing near lines, wind blowing limbs into lines and ivy climbing around poles. And, they will sound the poles with a hammer six inches above the ground to check for top and bottom deterioration, woodpecker holes, splitting, missing hardware and leaking fluid.
“It will help us identify areas of the distribution grid that needs maintenance, as well as what may help the reliability of our system,” Vaughn says.
Also, LCRA planners plan to initiate an annual review of the city’s electrical usage, to ensure it meets Electric Reliability Council of Texas power requirements.
