PSO outlines causes of repeated Jenks outages; says substation fixes, smart switches and transformer upgrades underway

Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO) officials told the Jenks City Council on Jan. 21 that multiple causes underlay a series of power outages in the city over the past months and that company engineers have implemented fixes and planned infrastructure upgrades to improve reliability.

Rodrigo Rojas, PSO external affairs manager for the Tulsa region, introduced the company team and said PSO wanted to address Melody Lane and downtown outages that residents raised at prior meetings. Dwayne Apple, PSO vice president of distribution services, acknowledged the outages and said the utility “own[s] that” the company had not met its usual reliability standards for the city since early November.

Apple and other PSO staff described a mix of causes: wildlife such as squirrels, equipment failures and metal Mylar balloons that can short lines. Apple said an adjustment in a substation protection scheme allowed certain faults to “ride through” and take the whole substation offline; PSO personnel traced and corrected that miscoordination, and Apple said the company believes the problem has been addressed.

PSO presented a list of infrastructure updates planned or underway in Jenks. Ashley Nolte, who identified herself as a Jenks resident and said she leads the company’s transmission field services work in the area, said the work includes replacing transformers and upgrading protection at the Jenks substation at 91st and Outwood and upgrades at a substation near 116th and Peoria along Elm. She said substation transformer replacements and feeder-equipment work tied to the Elm road widening are expected to be finished in April. PSO also described installing smart switches on distribution lines to create a more sectionalized, “self-healing” grid that can restore power more quickly after localized faults.

Council members asked about PSO’s proactive inspection program and about hardening substations against vandalism or theft. Apple said PSO uses advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) to monitor meters and transformers and to flag equipment that may be at end of life; the company also conducts periodic line inspections and deploys targeted hardening measures at substations as needed.

PSO representatives said they have used drones with infrared cameras when crews needed help locating hot spots or otherwise could not find faults by patrol-style inspections. Those flights were run with line-of-sight permissions and were not routine blanket patrols, one official said.

When asked whether outages had continued since PSO staff said the miscoordination was fixed, a PSO speaker said the company had not seen further similar outages “not since the 25th.” PSO executives encouraged residents to report outages through the PSO app, by phone or through PSO’s social channels and identified Rodrigo Rojas as a local contact for the city.

City officials said they appreciate the company’s engagement and stressed that clear, public-facing outage information on social media is important for residents.

PSO did not present a rate proposal or request local approvals; the presentation was informational and focused on operational fixes and planned upgrades.