The South Coast Loop

Your power

Oregon Nuclear owns the wires as well as the plant. From the 230 kV switchyard the South Coast Loop runs north to Langlois and Bandon and south to Port Orford and Gold Beach, with four substations, ten feeders and about 6,100 meters between them, and a line north to the state's interconnection at Coos Bay that carries the rest of what the units make.

The 230 kV switchyard: steel structures, breakers and the first towers of the South Coast Loop against the sky

The loop

From Bandon to Gold Beach

230 kV line
Substation, 115/12.5 kV
Switching station
The Pacific

The loop is a ring: the station's switchyard is joined to both the Langlois and the Port Orford substations, and they are joined to each other, so that any one line can be lost without a town going dark. From Port Orford a single line runs south through the Humbug switching station, where the loop can be split, to Gold Beach; from Langlois a line runs north-west to Bandon and the tie runs north to Coos Bay.

Each substation steps the 230 kV down to 115 kV and then to 12.5 kV for its feeders, and each feeder is cut into blocks, the sectionalized pieces a dispatcher can switch on their own: a village, a road, the harbor. That is how a storm's damage is isolated to the smallest piece of the coast while a crew works, and how the Grid Operations desk at the station can restore the clinic before the campground.

The grid runs at 60 hertz, the dispatcher's desk is staffed around the clock, and five line crews work out of yards at Langlois, Port Orford, Bandon and Gold Beach.

Substations and feeders

Who is on which line

The South Coast Loop's four substations and its switching station
Substation	Feeders	Serves	Meters
Langlois	LG-1 · LG-2	Langlois, Floras Lake, Sixes, Cape Blanco Road and the station's own services	652
Port Orford	PO-1 · PO-2 · PO-3 · PO-4	Port Orford from Garrison Lake to Humbug Mountain, the harbor, the Elk River valley and the clinic	2,248
Bandon	BD-1 · BD-2	Old Town Bandon, Beach Loop, the industrial park, the cranberry bogs and Coquille Road	1,705
Gold Beach	GB-1 · GB-2	Gold Beach, Wedderburn, North Bank Road, Jerrys Flat Road, the airport and the county yard	1,470
Humbug	—	A switching station between Port Orford and Gold Beach; no customers	0

Meters are the customers connected, not people. The station's own services ride a feeder of their own from Langlois, LG-2, with emergency diesels behind them.

Planned work

What the crews are doing

Planned outages are short, in daylight, and announced to the meters affected by card and by KGAJ a week ahead. The work below is by season; the day and hour come on the card.

Planned work on the loop, by season
Season	Where	Work	Who notices
This autumn	Elk River Road (PO-4)	Tree trimming along the right-of-way	Brief interruptions, mid-morning, announced by card
This autumn	North Bank Road (GB-1)	Pole replacements found by the inspection cycle	Two short planned outages, daylight
Before the winter storms	Every yard	Spare transformers and storm stock in place; the storm roster posted	Nobody
This winter	Beach Loop, Bandon (BD-1)	Pole replacements and a new recloser	One planned outage, a weekday morning, announced by card
This spring	Port Orford substation	Breaker maintenance on feeders PO-2 and PO-3	Load carried by the other feeders; nobody
This spring	Harbor and dock (PO-2)	Scheduled maintenance on the harbor block, on a work order with the port	Arranged with the dock master around the fleet
Early summer	Langlois yard	The new apprentice class starts; training field work	Nobody

Report an outage

Lights out?

The outage line, (696) 412-0511, is answered around the clock by the Grid Operations desk at the station and is the fastest way to report an outage. This form reaches the same desk.

Your name

Phone

Address of the outage

Nearest town

What you see

Anything else (optional)

If a line is down, stay well back from it and anything it touches, and call rather than write.

A line on the ground is live until a crew says it is not. Stay back the length of a bus, and call.

Restoration

How the lights come back

When a feeder trips in a storm the dispatcher sees it first, on the console at the station, and the recloser on the line tries three times in a few seconds to put the power back, which clears a branch that has brushed the wire. If the fault holds, the block it is in is isolated, the blocks around it are switched back on from the other direction where the loop allows, and a crew is sent. The crew finds the fault, makes the line safe, repairs it and calls the dispatcher, who closes the block on a work order and writes it in the log. Nothing on the loop is switched without a work order number and a reason, and the log keeps every line.

In a big storm the order of work is the one in the box above, and the outage line's recording is updated every hour with where the crews are. Estimates of restoration time are honest and usually a little pessimistic.

The plant behind the loop.

Two units, about 2,270 megawatts, and the switchyard where the loop begins.

The station How it works