Hurricane Katrina: Process of Restoration of Electricity, Research Paper Example

Hurricane Katrina presented Mississippi-Louisiana state which was associated with operational challenge of significantly high magnitude in a time period of 80 years leading to an insured loss of $40 billion dollars. As a result all the 195,000 power clientele from Mississippi went without power after the destruction of close to 67 percent of systems of transmission as well as distribution. In addition, not only over 300 towers of transmission underwent extensive damage, 9000 poles were damaged and other 2300 transformers were lost. The storm also interrupted oil production and refining going on at Gulf Eden

On the first day after the storm the utilities worked around the clock to connect pipeline pumping station in Mississippi and Collins. Also of importance during the response emergency was gasoline supply of the eastern USA. The Mississippi power also fueled the hospital generators as they worked on restoring electricity (Knabb, Rhome, and & Brown, 2005).

Through the mutual assistance agreement of many utilities across the nation, more than 10,800 workers from the 23 states of and Canada assisted Mississippi power to bring back power. The first priority for all the utilities working to restore electricity was to key customers like the hospital, emergency responders and water systems. The utility company led by Mississippi established a 230 KV to an interconnection point with the Alabama Power across Jackson County, to gulf coast and other places like Laurel.

Plant Watson combustion power was operational on September 8 and coal yard was working in 34days. It is estimated that the cost of power restoration was more than $ 250 million while electricity was restored to about 600 customers on the first day; 126,000customers has been connected to electricity on day 9. All the utilities working together restored electricity service to all the customers by the end of day 12 after Katrina happened.

Reference

Knabb, R.D., Rhome, J.R. & Brown, D.P. (2005). Tropical Cyclone Report Hurricane Katrina. National Hurricane Center. Miami, Fla.