After 400 hours of work, Progress Energy continues to look for the origin of electricity that is leaking into a neighborhood pool in Palm Harbor. The pool remains closed.
By RICHARD DANIELSON
Published August 4, 2004
[Times photo: Kathleen Flynn]
The neighborhood pool in the Villas of Beacon Groves was closed last month after residents reported tingling.
PALM HARBOR - The search is less like looking for a needle in a haystack and more like looking for a handful of needles scattered across a hay field.
In recent weeks, workers from Progress Energy have spent about 400 hours painstakingly searching for the cause or causes of an electric current that shut down a neighborhood pool in the Villas of Beacon Groves last month.
On Tuesday, an engineer on the project said they're making progress but have reached no firm conclusions.
Preliminary indications are that there might be things that need to be fixed both with Progress Energy's equipment and the neighborhood's pool. "We're following a very methodical troubleshooting plan," Progress Energy lead engineer Lou Santilli said.
As a result, it's difficult to estimate how long the utility's detective work and any needed repairs might take.
"It can be something very simple or it can be very complex," said Charlie Williams, principal engineer in Progress Energy's distribution asset performance unit. Williams, an expert on stray voltage, is a technical consultant on the project.
Property managers closed the pool in mid July after residents complained of feeling a tingling when they swam near one of the pool's underwater lights.
The neighborhood's homeowners association brought in its own electrician, who continues to work with Progress Energy, as well as a pool repair company. For now, power to the pool area has been cut off.
Initially, the neighborhood suspected that the problem might be with the pool light alone. Then electricians and engineers began looking at the pool's neighbor, a large Progress Energy substation at the corner of Alderman and Belcher roads.
Santilli said the amount of electricity in the pool is not enough to injure someone and, despite the impressions of people in the Villas of Beacon Groves, it is not getting stronger.
Utility officials have described what's likely happening this way:
Normally, when a customer flips a switch, high-voltage electricity flows from the substation in smaller doses to a power pole, where it moves into a home and, for example, lights a lamp.
As the lamp turns on, electricity returns to the substation to complete the circuit. In this case, somewhere on that return journey, the electricity is hitting a roadblock, most likely a connector corroded by heavy rains.
The electricity is stopped, and the current needs a release point, or ground.
The electricity then travels to the nearest available location - in this case, the Villas at Beacon Groves' pool. It passes through one of the light fixtures in the pool and into the water.
The Alderman substation serves about 12,000 customers. Other than residents at the Villas of Beacon Groves, no homeowners are affected, according to Progress Energy.
One of the residents who complained about the current said Tuesday she was glad investigators are working through the problem.
"As long as they get to the bottom of it," said Carol-Lynn Straub, who said she felt a sting, like a slap on her arm, while in the pool one day in June. "Many of the neighbors have said to us, like the man across the street, that they weren't even aware that it was happening."
