PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 20, No. 13, Feb. 1, 2001

Unplugged
Fast work by campus crews restores power after fire at Abbott Power Plant causes widespread outage

Craig Chamberlain, News Bureau Staff Writer
(217) 333-2894; cdchambe@illinois.edu

Photo by Bill Wiegand Up in smoke A worker inspeccts the charred remains of the 13,800-volt switch-gear-panel at Abbott Power Plant. The panel was badley damaged in an explosion and fire Jan. 26 that resulted in a loss of power and heat for much of the campus.

A campus that has weathered blizzards and severe cold without canceling a class, but which also depends on electric power to get almost anything done, got a lesson in humility Jan. 26.

In the wake of an explosion and fire at the Abbott Power Plant about 8:20 a.m., which required the complete shutdown of power running through the plant, faculty, staff and students in probably three-quarters of campus buildings found themselves without the use of computers, copiers, fax machines and electric light.

Almost all campus buildings were without steam because electrical equipment damaged in the fire required the shutdown of three coal-fired boilers in operation at the time.

By mid-morning, as a result, classes had been canceled for the day in all but a few buildings, and many employees were being told they could go home. Plans were being made to reschedule evening events at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts and elsewhere, and contingencies were being considered for 8,700 students in university residence halls that potentially could be without heat for several days.

But despite the damage and disruption caused by the fire, extinguished by the Champaign Fire Department about 9:35 a.m., electric power was restored to some of the affected buildings starting about 11:30 a.m., according to Terry Ruprecht, chief facilities officer for the campus. All of the affected residence halls had power restored by 2:30 p.m. The buildings getting power were on a grid fed through power plant equipment not damaged in the explosion.

Gas boilers that had been off-line were fired up starting at 12:30 p.m. and steam was slowly flowing back into the campuswide system by mid-afternoon. By early evening, heat was slowly returning to campus buildings.

By 10 p.m., the steam system was at full capacity, and at about 11:45 p.m. Friday, power was restored to the rest of the campus still left in the dark. (Campus workers, in fact, had to spend a lot of time that night shutting off lights.)

As of Saturday morning, the campus was almost back to normal, thanks to luck, skills and teamwork, according to Ruprecht. "I feel we’re extraordinarily fortunate that we’re where we are and were there by Saturday morning," he said this past Monday.

On the side of good fortune, Ruprecht noted that no one was injured in the explosion and fire that destroyed three of 12 switch-gear enclosures, and damaged two others, in a 13,800-volt panel at the power plant. The explosion likely was caused by an arc in one of the high-voltage devices, which Ruprecht described as very large circuit breakers. The precise cause has not been determined.

Colder, more January-like temperatures would have caused more problems in the recovery, he said. "Had it been 15-20 degrees colder, we’d have been in a significantly different situation." Water lines likely would have been freezing in some locations, and the two available boilers would not have been able to meet the full demand for heat.

Normal winter temperatures require three boilers in operation, Ruprecht said, but the damage to the switch-gear panel meant the three coal-fired boilers could not be used, and one of the three gas boilers was undergoing maintenance.

Although luck played a role, Ruprecht chiefly credited the skills and efforts of Operation and Maintenance and other UI staff for the speed of the recovery.

"We have a number of very, very technically-capable people in O&M, and quite frankly have spent the last 10 years trying to assure that we had the right combination of people in terms of skills and knowledge and everything else, and that was borne out in an extraordinary way on Friday.

"It took a lot of different people, skilled trades, engineers, people on the power plant staff, people all the way around, that had to pull together in a very stressful situation."

The situation called for "a myriad of small decisions all during the day … and there were just a lot of very good decisions made on Friday," Ruprecht said. "The layman will never understand how much work had to be done in order to get that system back up in that amount of time."

For students in university housing – other than Orchard Downs, which was not affected – the falling temperatures through the day caused some discomfort for residents, according to Jack Collins, director of housing.

The dining halls, most of which are surrounded by large windows and therefore lose more heat, were cold for lunch and colder by the start of dinner. Hot water was not available for showers. There also was no hot water for cooking, though that actually required few changes in the menu, Collins said.

Housing staff took blankets out of storage and made them available to anyone who wanted one, and made plans for a cool night. But room temperatures were probably back to normal by late evening.

The real problems would have started if the steam had still been off by Saturday morning, Collins said. Then the housing staff would have been arranging temporary housing for thousands of students, and in fact they had spent much of Friday anticipating that.

The e-mail system also was a temporary casualty of Friday’s power outage, though it probably mattered little to many who didn’t have working computers to read it by.

The campus lost its Internet connection for about three hours, according to Bob Penka, interim director of the Computing and Communications Services Office (CCS0), but only because a backup generator that should have maintained the connection failed. The connection was restored when power was restored to part of the campus around 11:30 a.m.

The other interruption was at the central e-mail service, which accepts incoming mail for the campus and posts outgoing mail. Most of the servers there went down with the power, though backup servers in a building fed directly by Illinois Power continued to function, Penka said.

"The mail was just written to disk and saved until the network was alive and the machines to which the mail was to be sent were speaking again," he said.

In both cases, with the Internet connection and the central e-mail service, the mail was being spooled and saved for later delivery, Penka said. "No one should have lost e-mail through any of the equipment we operate," he said.

The e-mail system was largely back to normal operation by 5:30 p.m.

As for the damage to the power plant, Ruprecht said a representative from the insurance company was on campus the day of the fire, and a cost estimate was expected within a week.