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Union: Overloaded grid ready to ‘pop’: Warns of blackouts, explosions
By Dave Wedge
Boston Herald Chief Enterprise Reporter
Saturday, May 12, 2007 - Updated: 07:43 AM EST
With temperatures already surging into the 80s and a scorching summer on tap, many Massachusetts communities could face a spike in blackouts - and possibly even explosions - from thousands of potentially dangerous overloaded electrical transformers.
Overloaded grid
National Grid coverage area
Documents obtained by the Herald show more than 12,000 transformers from Attleboro to Ayer are operating at above 200 percent capacity, with some as high as 900 percent over design standards. Union officials, who last night reached an agreement in contract talks with National Grid, say the overloads are pushing the state’s electrical system to the brink and could lead to widespread blackouts this summer.
“I would predict that you’re going to see more outages this summer because of transformer failure than any other summer,” said Gary Sullivan, president of the Utility Workers of America Local 369. “Now that we’ve gotten the data and seen how bad it is, we can’t imagine it’s not going to start to pop.”
But National Grid spokesman David Graves said most tranformers fail from lightning, not overuse, and that the company is within industry standards.
“Transformers can run beyond their rate of capacity. We feel this policy does not present a danger either to our employees or to the public,” Graves said.
He added the company has replaced 9,000 transformers in New England and New York in the past year as part of an ongoing $3 billion equipment upgrade.
But union officials say maintenance is lax from low staffing, which has led to a glut of overloaded transformers that could cause explosions, outages and other safety hazards. “It’s a dangerous situation,” Sullivan said.
Some of the biggest potential hazards lie in Marlboro, Southboro and Westboro, where some transformers are operating at up to 600 percent of their designed capacity, National Grid records show.
Possible North Shore hot spots include Gloucester, Salem and Manchester, where many were more than 400 percent above capacity. In western and central Massachusetts, transformers in Worcester, Winchendon, Leicester, Ayer and Spencer were found operating at up to 900 percent above capacity, documents show. Sullivan said the union is seeking similar information about overloaded transformers from Nstar.
The situation has caught the eye of Attorney General Martha Coakley, who last month launched a probe into the merger of National Grid and Keyspan. Coakley’s petition noted National Grid has faced overload complaints in New York and transformers in Massachusetts pose “the risk of explosion and injury.”
Officials with ISO New England, a nonprofit which monitors the region’s electrical grid, questioned whether transformers might cause outages or pose dangers this summer. “There are no (safety) concerns that I can identify,” said spokesman Ken McDonnell.
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