The NC Department of Transportation will soon be underway with two (2) separate Pamlico County Bridge replacement projects funded in the 2022 and 2023 Highway Maintenance Improvement Program (HMIP) Plan.

The Cedar Gut Bridge and the Beard Creek Bridge are both located along Neuse Road. The anticipated bridge replacements required the relocation of existing Tideland EMC infrastructure, while energized, so as not to interrupt service to Pamlico County co-op members served by Arapahoe Circuit.

In normal operation, the electric cooperative’s distribution system is designed to operate in a way that allows very short faults or interruptions to clear contact with our circuits without causing an outage. For example, a small limb might fall through a circuit and make only momentary contact. In normal operation, the small limb would not cause an outage due to the settings on various protective devices that allow for multiple operations to clear the fault.

For the safety of line crews performing energized work, the electric cooperative takes action to change the settings on various protective devices while work is taking place. This minimizes the possibility of a circuit remaining energized while electric linemen are close in proximity.

This temporary change for the safety of line crews comes with a downside, however. Momentary interruptions (like the example of the small limb) will likely cause an outage on the entire circuit.

This trade-off worked well for Tideland EMC in the week that ended Friday, July 21st, as crews successfully relocated all necessary Tideland EMC infrastructure, while energized, at the Cedar Gut Bridge location. No momentary interruptions to the circuit took place while we temporarily changed the settings on distribution system devices for the safety of the crews performing the work.

Our positive experience at Cedar Gut Bridge last week was not the same, however, at Beard Creek Bridge this week. During the temporary change of the settings on devices to protect crews performing energized work, we suffered the following:

• Tue, July 25th: 11:58am momentary interruption from wildlife resulted in an outage.
• Wed, July 26th: 12:48pm a logging crew boom made contact and resulted in an outage.
• Thu, July 27th: 1:47pm a momentary interruption (cause not yet identified) resulted in an outage.

We anticipate, however, that all necessary line work will be completed on Beard Creek Bridge today. We look forward to normal daytime operation of our distribution system on July 28th.