April's Fury: Alabama Power's Transmission Organization Battles Historic Losses after April 27th Storms

摘要

This paper will assess the impact of the April 27th storms that devastated the Alabama Power service territory. It will assess and scrutinize the storms' characteristics, statistics of losses, failures of materials, and the restoration efforts from the utilities perspective. Before sunrise on April 27,2011, a round of tornados and straight line winds tore through West Central and Northwest Alabama. By 8:20 am, Alabama Power Transmission and Distribution crews were hard at work restoring power to 270,767 customers that were affected by the early morning onslaught. As mid-morning approached, office personnel and upper management became concerned about the ominous forecast coming from the National Weather Service for the afternoon storm systems headed toward Alabama. As early afternoon warnings loomed, all restoration efforts were halted and crews were sent to secure locations to ride out the deteriorating weather. By late afternoon, the true stress test for catastrophic system damage took place as 62 tornados tore through the state of Alabama. By midnight, Alabama Power had 412,229 customers in the dark, 171 transmission lines out, 438 transmission structures down or damaged, 318 substations out, 6 substations with major damage, and 2 of those 6 left unrecognizable. The seven days following the storms led to proactive and reactive restoration efforts by the Alabama Power transmission team. The value of this information lies in the opportunity for other utility companies to look inside this storm's devastation and dissect their own disaster plans to become better prepared for Mother Nature's fury.