A winter storm two weeks ago caused a power surge in the Lutak Spur area that caused significant damage to appliances, heating systems, and furnaces, residents said.
The surge was caused by heavy snow causing tree branches to hit power lines, said Alaska Power & Telephone Vice President Jason Custer, something he described as “relatively common.”
It’s the second time in just over a year residents in the area have gotten such a surge. Last winter’s surge was also attributed by AP&T area manager Darren Belisle to trees hitting power lines. Both last year and this year, utility staff have said residents need to take their own action to protect their homes.
“It’s extremely rare that the issue is caused by something on the utility’s side when somebody loses a piece of equipment. Usually something like wiring in a customer’s house,” Custer said this week. “People generally don’t like that answer but unfortunately there’s a lot of funky wiring in rural Alaska.”
Custer said in the Lutak area specifically, the utility has observed poor wiring in homes.
“We’ve noticed some of the households there have improper grounding and we’ve sent them letters about that. In our tariffs it’s the customers responsible to have proper grounding and wiring in their homes,” Custer said. “We would recommend to people to have an electrician take a look, install voltage protection, and have a professional look at things on their side of the meter.”
Area residents, however, expressed frustration with the utility, and said they had taken measures to protect their homes. Longtime Lutak resident Richard Buck lost a heat pump — “a couple thousand dollars again,” he said — even though he had an electrician install a surge protector after last year’s surge. Buck also reported that he had grounding rods and additional circuit breakers before the heat pump.
He instead laid the blame on tree limbs he said were overgrown over area electrical wires. “The limbs are over the top of the wires by the tank farm,” Buck said. “As far as I’m concerned it’s 100% the fault of the company.
Buck said he plans to file a complaint to AP&T and to state regulators.