Beaumont, Texas – Entergy Texas, Inc.’s own employees would have to admit that pad-mounted transformers aren’t the prettiest things to grace a street corner or the edge of someone’s lawn.

But those square metal boxes sprinkled around areas served by underground power lines are essential to keeping the lights on. They are just as important in helping electrical workers identify the location of a problem when an outage does occur. Unfortunately, when customers try to beautify an area by building fences or locating plants and shrubs around the transformers the work of keeping the lights on or restoring power in an outage are made more difficult.

“Landscaping placed too close to transformers can cause the bottom of the transformer to corrode and that can lead to outages,” explained Shawn Corkran, Entergy Texas’ director of transmission and distribution operations. “Vegetation can also delay restoration after an outage because workers often must remove the obstructive vegetation to get to the transformer to make repairs or identify where a problem has occurred on the power line. Our workers need 10 feet of clearance in front of a transformer to do their work safely and well.”

Corkran cited an example from July 2009 when an outage in a Southeast Texas neighborhood could have been resolved in an hour. Instead, Entergy customers endured a three-hour outage because six of the eight pad-mounted transformers that needed to be checked were obstructed by carefully planted vegetation.

“The worker we sent to restore power spent as long as 15 or 20 minutes at each transformer removing landscaping so he could open the transformer door and check the equipment,” Corkran said. “I understand that our customers might prefer to look at some azalea bushes rather than a square metal box, but I also believe we share the same bottom-line priority – safely keeping the electricity flowing.”

A transformer is a device that transforms the higher voltage of a power distribution line to a lower voltage that can be used in a customer’s facility With almost all of Southeast Texas served by overhead lines, these devices are typically located beneath power lines near the tops of utility poles. In residential areas served by underground power lines, the transformers must be accessible to workers, yet remain close to power lines, so they are mounted on concrete pads on the ground.

“When an underground line loses power, all the transformers on that line experience an outage,” Corkran said.. “In order to locate exactly where the problem is, the serviceman or lineman, opens the transformer, does a visual inspection and checks the fault indicator. Once the problem is located, we can switch power sources to isolate just that portion of line so not all the customers experience the full length of an outage.”

Corkran advised customers to keep the following in mind:

• Mulch, flower beds or fertilizer near the base of a transformer will cause corrosion which can eventually lead to leaking oil. If oil leaks, the transformer can overheat and result in both an outage and extensive clean-up process.

• Trees, buildings or fences in front of a transformer delay line workers from getting to the equipment in a timely manner and may also create a safety hazard.

Entergy Texas, Inc. provides electricity to more than 400,000 customers in 27 counties. It is a subsidiary of Entergy Corporation. Entergy is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations. Entergy owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, and it is the second-largest nuclear generator in the United States. Entergy delivers electricity to 2.7 million utility customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Entergy has annual revenues of more than $10 billion and more than 15,000 employees.

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