At Rolling Hills Electric Cooperative, we know our members expect the lights to come on every time they turn on the switch. Our goal is to safely and reliably deliver electricity to homes and businesses. However, there are times when we experience a power outage for a variety of reasons. At approximately 2:30 PM on Monday, August 14, we experienced an outage on our Republic, Scandia, and Jamestown substations which impacted approximately 1,400 meters.

Initially, crews worked to pinpoint the cause which proved to be difficult due to the nature of the outage. The cause was determined to be a failed transformer at our Scandia substation. Power was restored to the vast majority of members by roughly 6:30 PM with a few members out for several more hours as the circuits in that area were switched in order to back feed power. The failure of a large transformer is an uncommon event and staff immediately went into action to locate a new transformer Monday evening into early Tuesday morning, coordinate shipping, and develop a timeline to swap the unit. This is a challenge due to current supply constraints; the unit was found in Texas. In addition, the transformer weighs roughly 40,000 pounds which presents logistical challenges including the need for a crane. 

Our tentative plan is to swap the transformer on the evening of Friday, August 18 into early Saturday morning in an effort to minimize disruptions and impacts. Currently, our circuits in this area are switched to handle load, however, because of this switching, we do have lower thresholds to work with. This may require us to work with large power users to control load for periods of time in order to keep that portion of our system up. Technically this is not a supply issue, rather it is an equipment issue. Think of a transformer as a pump; if you lose a pump, you still have supply from other pumps but with reduced capacity. Additionally, if the distance is further from the pump to the end need, your capacity is again reduced. We have redundancies in our system, however, there are limitations to those redundancies. 

We understand that this is a tough situation for our members and apologize for any inconvenience this event may have caused. Rolling Hills staff will rise to the challenge and continue to do everything we can to fix the failure and ensure the power remains on. 

Rolling Hills Electric Cooperative proudly supplies power to over 6,600 members, on 11,300 meters, over 6,414 miles of line across 16 counties in North Central Kansas. 

To stay up to date on this situation and other Rolling Hills events, please visit our website Rolling Hills Electric Cooperative, Inc. or our Facebook page Rolling Hills Electric Cooperative.

We will continue to communicate with our members to keep them informed as more information becomes available. If you have questions or concerns, please call me, Jason Rabe, CEO/General Manager, at 785-534-1601.