Power outages disrupt local businesses

A trio of power outages that struck north Big Horn County last Monday and Tuesday, Sept. 8-9, were annoying to many local residents, but for some companies, the outages were damaging.

According to a Rocky Mountain Power spokesman, the outages were at least partially the result of new safety protocols now in place in Wyoming.

Two outages took place Monday and a third Tuesday. The first was from 11:40 a.m. to 1:20 p.m. Monday, then a second from 2:07 to 2:24 p.m. Monday. A third outage was in effect from 10:43 to 11:32 a.m. Tuesday. Each of the outages affected 1,060 Rocky Mountain Power customers in the Lovell and Garland areas.

The initial outage hit the Western Sugar Company Lovell factory hard, but the factory crew was able to keep the system running thanks to some good, old fashioned elbow grease.

“It completely shut us down,” factory manager Shannon Ellis said. “And so the entire facility just drops out. And then the biggest thing we have to worry about is that sugar gets hard very quickly. And so we have to keep the mixer turning. So when the power goes out, we have to put a lock on the disconnect and then turn it by hand. And it’s much slower that way.

“So there’s people taking turns turning this while the power’s out. We’re looking at ways to ease that pain, but usually we don’t have it out that for that long. So that’s actually the biggest thing. That darn mixer can get really heavy, and it’ll set up on you, kind of like concrete, and so we have to keep it moving. Eventually, it bricks up. It gets heavy and turns into a solid.”

Ellis said the mixer is used in the final stages of sugar production.

“It’s right before we separate it out in the white centrifugal, so from right there, it goes to the white centrifugal, and the juice is spun off and the sugar remains,” he said.

Asked what steps could be taken to minimize problems in the future, Ellis said the next day the factory crew hooked up a small generator with an attachment for the end of the gearbox and kept it turning.

“We wanted to be better prepared than the hand crank, but we usually don’t have them (outages) that long. It’s unusual for it to be that long. Often, they pop on in about five minutes.”

Queen Bee

While Western Sugar didn’t suffer any product loss, just a slowdown in production, Queen Bee Honey Candy suffered a significant loss on the second day, co-owner Jason Zeller said.

The company dodged a bullet the first day.

“Our cook wasn’t feeling well, so we only did three batches of candy rather than five, so we finished about 10 minutes before the power went out,” Zeller said. “We still had candy to cut and wrap, so I was able to pull it out and put it on a table so I could work with it later. We could see (up front) with the light from the front windows.”

It was a different story the next day, Zeller said.

“Tuesday, we weren’t so lucky,” he said. “We were trying to catch up when the power went out right in the middle of a batch of candy. It doesn’t matter if it’s one second or two hours. As soon as the power goes out, we lose the entire batch of candy.”

Queen Bee lost anywhere from $2,400 to $3,300 in ruined product, Zeller said, though he added, “We were kind of lucky. We lost one batch rather than two.”

Zeller explained that the cooker is vacuum operated, with water going through a pump, and when the power shuts off, the pressurized water keeps going.

“It puts water into the product, and we lose the product,” he said. “It back-tracks into the candy. I was right next to it, and I couldn’t shut it off fast enough.”

He added that even a generator would not be able to kick on in time, and he said he and the crew were certainly nervous the next day, anticipating the power going off.

Red Apple

The Red Apple Supermarket, also known as the Market at Lovell, didn’t lose much food, but the timing of the outages hurt the store’s sales last week, store manager Mike Allred said.

“Luckly, we had a brand new battery backup so we could run the registers and get people out of the store,” Allred said. “We have some emergency lights so it’s not completely dark, but we couldn’t let (new) customers in.

“Both days it happened during our lunch rush, when (last week) was not a rush.”

Allred said most of the store freezers are fully enclosed, so they can hold their temperature for a long time, though the cooked food in the deli had to be thrown away.

Not only are the large walk-in freezers completely enclosed, the shopping freezers and refrigerators are enclosed in a step store management took several years ago, which kept product from warming, Allred said. Fresh meat was sealed with a cover as soon as the power went off, he added.

Maverik

Like Red Apple, the fact that the outages, especially on Monday, struck during lunchtime – and especially the school lunch break – affected sales at the Maverik Country Store, store manager Sheila Gossens said.

Sometimes an outage will cause equipment failure since the store operates with high tech “smart ovens,” Gossens said, but this time the store was fortunate that the equipment came through fine.

“My biggest thing was loss of sales,” she said. “My high school kids didn’t get their pizza, and I was upset about that. They need to be fed. They’re hungry, and they only have so much time for lunch. We were in the process of cooking pizzas when we got shut down, though we did have some burritos made. We had to waste everything (not immediately sold).”

Gossens figured the store lost $200 to $300 in “ready to eat” food during each outage, though stored food came through OK. She said the store lost 3.69% in food sales and 2.93% in in-store sales. There was a great potential for loss of fuel sales, as well, Gossens said, but most customers merely came back later after the outage.