By Meladi Brewer

DailyAdvocate.com

VERSAILLES — The Versailles Village Council met Wednesday to discuss electrical solutions.

Versailles residence members may have noticed a recent delay in power restoration after outages have taken place. After the latest power outage on July 23, the village has been working to contact AES, and work on resolving the power failure issues.

Village Administrator Mike Busse gave his report at the meeting and spoke about this electrical supply reliability. He advised on Friday, Aug. 5 AES completed an upgrade of the sectionalizer switches which are located at the village’s Water Street Substation.

The upgrade included some wiring modification on the power sensing equipment and program updates to allow for more efficient automatic operation. The wiring modifications stem from an accidental mishap with the original wiring causing the system to not respond correctly.

“What we found out after this last event was somebody had wired them backwards, so when they didn’t work at all because now when you lost power, you were locked into the side that had no power,” Busse said.

The village has two switches, one with power from Covington and the other from Rossburg, with Versailles sitting in the middle. If you lose power from one circuit, the way it was supposed to work, is the side that lost power was supposed to open and the other side that had power was to stay locked in. For the past year, due to backwards wiring, the opposite was happening.

“What happened was they ran the wires down the same conduit. Somebody did. I don’t know who did it,” Busse said. “When they got to the bottom, they put them on the wrong contact.”

Finding and fixing the wiring issue was the first step to creating more reliable electric. The second step was radio equipment and program updates to allow for more efficient automatic operation. The radio equipment will allow the control room in Dayton to see the status of the power feeds and switches and remotely control them if necessary.

“These changes should assist AES and Versailles in minimizing the duration of outages caused by transmission line issues,” Busse said.

“We’re pretty happy about it, but we are not at all saying this is the answer,” Busse said. “It is just a huge step into the right direction.”

Busse also gave an update of the well field progress. Well #13, located on the Kettler property, has been completed and the pump has been installed allowing the village to complete the step and 72-hour tests.

“We are attempting to get these scheduled for the last week of the month,” Busse said.

Busse said they closed on the Dirksen property last Thursday and is the location of well #12. He continued to say there was a recommendation that council approve him to enter into a contract with Access Engineering in the amount of $210,000 for professional engineering services to design and bid a raw water transmission line along Reed Road from the proposed wellfield to the Versailles Water Plant.

The council agreed to move forward with the contract although this project is not a budgeted item for 2022. Busse had recommended the council move forward with this design contract with the goal to have a shovel ready project that can be bid and constructed once funding is identified and secured. The idea is forward thinking as a tentative project outline needs to be obtained when applying for grants and other funding.

To contact Daily Advocate Reporter Meladi Brewer, email [email protected].