Some areas near the South Dakota border, including the city of Madison, were without power during Monday's storm.
Minnesota Valley Cooperative, which serves Madison and rural areas of Lac qui Parle, Yellow Medicine, Chippewa, Renville, Lyon and Lincoln counties, started responding to power outages at 7 a.m. Monday, said John Williamson, cooperative manager of operations.
Four of its substations failed near the South Dakota border, leaving some co-op members without power for about an hour, he said.
Just after 9:30 a.m., eight transmission poles broke near Gary, S.D. Ice buildup on the lines put too much stress on the poles, causing them to snap in half, Williamson said. Power was being looped elsewhere to service members, he said. The poles will need to be replaced.
"Just like dominoes, when one goes they all go," Williamson said.
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"Quite a bit" of Lac qui Parle County and parts of Yellow Medicine County were without power Monday afternoon, Williamson said.
"She's been hectic this morning, or all day I should say," Williamson said.
In the event Willmar lost all incoming power, the local utility has generating equipment available to provide much, but not all, of the city's electrical needs, according to John Brinkman, manager of power supply and purchasing at Willmar Municipal Utilities.
Willmar receives 28 megawatts of power -- over half of the city's load -- from the direct current power line originating at the Coal Creek Station owned by Great River Energy near Bismarck, N.D. The line ends in the Twin Cities area and the power is fed back to this area.
"If that went down ... we'd hear,'' Brinkman said.
To replace that power, Brinkman would determine how much electricity could be purchased on the market. If the power wasn't available or couldn't be transmitted to Willmar, the utility would fire up the downtown power plant and the diesel generating units, which can generate 34 megawatts of power. The city's electrical load on Monday was 40 to 41 megawatts, Brinkman said.
"What we couldn't cover or get in, we'd have to cut,'' he said. "If we'd lose everything coming in for whatever reason, we definitely would have to cut some load.''
David George, general manager at Kandiyohi Power Cooperative, said replacing power immediately is difficult if a major line goes down. However, power plants around the country are tied together and power could be provided by other sources.
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"If you lose the output of one plant, there is automatic switching that goes on,'' George said. "Other plants pick up the load that you've lost. There are reroutes that can be done on the transmission side. It is complex, but it can be done.''
Also, electric cooperatives like Kandiyohi Power have agreements with other co-ops and utilities to share crews in the event power lines go down and need repairs, he said.
