It’s been about 30 years since Brentwood last significantly upgraded its power infrastructure, and even back then, no one could have foreseen the types of electrical demands that the digital age has generated.
This is why the electrical demands in Brentwood have far exceeded its own capacity.
Stemming from several large and long power outages in 2013 and 2014, including one Superbowl Sunday black-out in Brentwood Park, the people involved in Mandeville Canyon got in touch with L.A. Councilmember Mike Bonin to ask for better communication with and forewarnings of outages from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP).
“And it put us on the path to go find all the things that were wrong in Mandeville Canyon, and it turned out there was a list of 55 things,” said the LADWP-Brentwood liaison Debra Hockemeyer.
Over the last year, LADWP has been busy making those 50 to 60 improvements, like replacing deteriorated poles, upgrading conductors, and installing new capacitors and regulators.
But the ultimate solution to Brentwood’s power problem is to add a new circuit in the power sub-station known as DS-66, found on the southwest corner of San Vicente Blvd. and Gretna Green Way.
Brentwood’s not alone. Neighboring areas like the Pacific Palisades, Encino, and West Los Angeles are also overloaded and periodically experience outages, according to Hockemeyer, who is also the vice president and treasurer for the Brentwood Hills Homeowners Association.
“So when Brentwood experiences a power problem, we don’t have anywhere to shift the load to either,” Hockemeyer said. “This manifests in longer outages.”
What to expect
LADWP spent more than six months designing and adding the new circuit to DS-66. To connect it to the existing power network, they will be running underground cables in an existing conduit along San Vicente Blvd., from the sub-station at Gretna Green Way to S. Bristol Ave. and are currently working to get final approvals and schedule the various crews.
This means LADWP will need to tear up the lower blocks of S. Bristol Ave. (300 – 450 S. Bristol Lane, from Hanover to San Vicente Blvd.) to install the new conduit and three new underground vaults to allow for splicing cables and switches for shifting loads when necessary.
“This is needed to enhance the capacity, so if there’s an outage over here, they can switch the power,” Hockemeyer explained.
Construction on the street will most likely start at the end of 2015, with LADWP estimating four to five months of work.
“But it’s a big deal when you start going underground and what happens is, all of a sudden they find cables or sewage that they didn’t think was there or they find water that they didn’t know was there,” Hockemeyer said.
Other repairs include installing new overhead lines on existing poles on Chadbourne, Burlingame and Rockingham Avenues; this will allow the new circuit to attach to the existing power network.
New regulators and capacitors will also be installed, 23 existing deteriorated poles will be replaced and two existing conductors will be upgraded for reliability, redundancy, and monitoring.
“So there’s going to be at least two scheduled outages [in Mandeville Canyon] when we transfer load to temporary cables that we install above ground temporarily,” said Nazir Fazli, DWP’s assistant district supervisor for West Los Angeles. Residents will be notified in a timely manner.
Fazli also said that the cost of updating LADWP’s infrastructure will not pass onto anyone, and all the work is being done to existing electrical support, so no new utility poles will pop up in front of someone’s yard.
LADWP is currently working on getting clearance to disseminate visual aids of the future repairs and upgrades to the system to show the magnitude and extent of the work.
“We wanted to make sure that all homeowners associations understand the construction that’s going to ensue in Brentwood in order to get our new circuit in, which is really, really critical to all of us,” Hockemeyer said.
