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Coldwater utility restores power after storm; transmission outage affected about 3,200 customers
Summary
Coldwater Board of Public Utilities staff said a transmission line failure during storms March 30 left roughly 3,200 customers — about 43% of the system — without power. Crews used onsite generators and coordination with transmission owner ITC to restore service by the morning of March 31.
Paul Schkubzak, utility director for the Coldwater Board of Public Utilities, told the Coldwater City Council on March 31 that severe storms the previous evening caused a transmission-line outage that left roughly 3,200 customers — about 43% of the utility’s customer base — without power.
Schkubzak said the outage began after storms moved through about 5:20 p.m. and was traced to a transmission line loss on Moores Road that removed one of three transmission feeds into the city. “We had roughly 3,200 customers out of power,” Schkubzak said, describing early troubleshooting and the involvement of ITC (Michigan electric transmission company) and local generation assets.
The utility used multiple responses in parallel: ITC crews worked to repair transmission ties and the city’s own generation assets were started in island mode. Schkubzak said crews brought diesel gensets online around 10 p.m. and shifted load cautiously to avoid overloading the units; the first power bank experienced an overload during an initial transfer and was restarted, and a second power bank came online about 11 p.m. He said the utility prioritized emergency services and critical circuits — noting the police and fire facilities, the recreation center and hospital circuits among those restored first.
Schkubzak described system topology factors that complicated restoration: one transmission line was out for maintenance, a second line suffered damage, and another was tied into a Jupiter battery storage site so some circuits had limited routing. He also said some onsite generation cannot “black start,” meaning it requires an external source to start and could not be used to re-energize the system from fully de-energized conditions. Schkubzak said ITC initially estimated a 16-hour repair but later rearranged crews and restored transmission service by about 7 a.m.; switching and controlled transfers completed the final restorations so that, by about 9:30 a.m. March 31, the utility reported service to all customers.
City Manager Keith Baker and others on the council thanked CBPU crews and other city departments for incident response. Schkubzak gave a list of after-action items the utility plans to review and said work remains to improve islanding procedures and generator capabilities.
During public comment, Third Ward resident Von Spovda praised the utility response, saying he and other residents had expected a longer outage. “We actually thought it was gonna be much later, much longer with our power outage,” Spovda said, and added his thanks to CBPU staff and crews.
No formal council action was taken on the matter during the March 31 meeting; the report was presented during the public-comment portion and summarized again in the city manager’s report.
