Downtown power grid not fully recovered post-flood

CEDAR RAPIDS - The downtown power grid is a part of city infrastructure that has yet to fully recover from the June 2008 flood, and it may be another year or so.

The reason: Alliant Energy's Interstate Power and Light is still relying on a temporary substation constructed in just three weeks to replace the Cedar Substation destroyed in the flood. The substation and its temporary replacement are located in the city transit system's downtown park-and-ride lot near the Cedar River.

The temporary substation lacks the redundancy and stability features of the old substation but will have to last for another year or more, because of the time it's taking to find a site less vulnerable to flooding for a better replacement.

“Any time you build something that usually takes a year in three weeks, you don't expect as much reliability,” IP&L spokesman Scott Drzycimski said.

The company's first proposal to build a substation on city-owned land east of the Cherry Building encountered opposition from the New Bohemia Arts & Entertainment District.

Cedar Rapids came to the rescue by offering to sell IP&L a different city-owned property near the former Sinclair property. The site once housed a rail car refurbishing facility called Rescar.

Interstate Power & Light was the high bidder last month in an auction process the city was required to hold. That isn't the utility's only land concern, however.

“The other piece we need is a significant amount of easements to get the feeds coming out of the substation downtown,” Drzycimski said. He said the city is the holder of land that's one of the options for the feeders.

The present reliability concerns have little to do with normal transmission problems associated with winter, and the temporary system is behaving far better than most engineers expected.

“We've had problems on it, certainly,” Drzycimski said, “but it's probably far exceeded the expectations of our engineering staff in its reliability.”

Informatics Inc., 118 Second St. SE, notices occasional “blips” in the power supply, co-owner Frank Osako said. It's not clear whether the blips are caused by grid problems or by interference, such as electrical contractors working in the area, Osako said.

Tektivity Inc., 119 Third St. NE, hosts and manages network applications and telecommunications services for many businesses in the region and state. President Doug Flugum said the company uses uninterruptible power supplies that filter the power and trigger generators to kick on when they sense that power levels are dropping.

“Our experience at this particular location - and I think it's a unique location - has not been impacted as much as other locations downtown,” Flugum said.

Flugum doesn't expect Tektivity to be relying on the downtown grid too much longer. It is preparing to move to southwest Cedar Rapids, because the city acquired the building in which it leases space for the new convention center.

“It is certainly easier on a guy's heart when you have good, reliable utility power rather than relying on the equipment you installed,” Flugum said.

IP&L expects a new substation to be completed at the end of 2011 or in early 2012.