Clay Electric says part of south end grid may need rebuilding
Columbia County residents still sweating and miserable in the dark, moving toward 48 hours without power in the late-summer aftermath of Hurricane Helene, got mixed reports from two power companies plugged in to Saturday’s Columbia County Commission meeting and emergency operations briefing.
Two other electricity providers were not present to give any updates.
Florida Power and Light won the day, promising 95% of its customer base would be restored by the end of the day Monday, then later updated its website map to say these 95% would see power restored in the county by Sunday evening.
Colin Hughes, FPL’s EOC representative said crews were working relentlessly to restore power safely and quickly in Columbia and Suwannee Counties and make the Monday timeframe for sure.
FPL has the largest customer base footprint in Columbia County with more than 14,300 customers.
Clay Electric spokesman Troy Adams told the commissioners his company had shifted all of its restorative assets to Alachua and Columbia counties, but ran into some problems because the Branford substation was still down and out of service. The Branford facility services about 5,000 customers, some of which are in southern Columbia County.
Also, Duke Energy energizes the substation, then Clay Electric moves the power onto customers, but Duke currently cannot get power to the substation.
“We’ve got most of our feeders restored today (Saturday),” Adams said. “Then we work on Three Rivers and Fort White, but some areas will have to be rebuilt … I don’t have an answer for restoration time.”
County Commission Chairman Ron Williams thanked both men for giving updates about their companies work in the field and the restoration process, but was triggered by the lack of respect shown by the two other companies who serve a portion of residents locally — Duke Energy and Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative.
Williams asked specifically where SVEC was and why they were a no-show for the second straight day of post-hurricane EOC briefings. Williams said he was very concerned with not having any information updates from SVEC since that company has a large footprint of customers in the county, especially in the north end where his district lies.
“I can’t get a damn answer from Suwannee Valley Electric,” Williams said. “I don’t like it.”
Williams apologized for his outburst. “I’m sorry for the choice words. I’m like Donald Trump. I say what I think.” Then he turned to County Manager David Kraus and demanded, “Get them to the next meeting!”
The next EOC Columbia County Commission meeting is scheduled for 4 p.m. Sunday at the EOC building.
An update from SVEC on Saturday evening indicated that it had power restored to 30% of its 2,132 consumers in Columbia County. Total, SVEC had 20.9% of consumers with power Saturday evening of its 28,867 members. Suwannee County had 23.5% energized (4,461 of 18,962) and Lafayette County had 25.5% with power (915 of 3,587).
In Hamilton County, SVEC had just two of 4,186 members with power on Saturday evening.