Downtown power grid still fragile 30 months after flood

The downtown Cedar Rapids power grid is one part of the city infrastructure that hasn't fully recovered from the June 2008 flood.

The reason: Alliant Energy's Interstate Power and Light is still relying on a temporary substation constructed in three weeks to replace the Cedar Substation that was destroyed in the massive 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 so because of the time it's taking to find a site less vulnerable to flooding for a better replacement and built it.

“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 the substation on city-owned land east of the Cherry Building encountered a wave of opposition from the New Bohemia Arts & Entertainment District.

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

Interstate Power & Light was the high bidder last month in a auction process the city was required to hold to dispose of the land. 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 the normal transmission problems associated with winter in a cold climate, such as ice storms that down power lines.

“It's more the equipment and how many pieces there are to back up equipment we have now,” Drzycimski said. In a more normal situation, he said the company could simply switch over to back up equipment if a problem develops, and customers would not even notice the original problem.

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 2nd St. SE, notices ocassional “blips” in the power supply that are handled by uninterruptible power supply devices, 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.

“We are equipped with redundant UPSs at our desktops and our data center, and backup generators as well,” Osako said, calling the downtown grid “pretty stable.”

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. He did not know whether the company has needed generator power more than before the flood, except for the initial period of instability after power was restored.

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 downtown events center expansion.

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

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