County takes possession of LAIC generator

Posted on Wednesday, August 5, 2015

By Jane Utecht, Staff Reporter, courtesy of the Madison Daily Leader

Every cloud has a silver lining. Or in this case, every power outage has its bright side.

During the power outage on May 27 that affected the downtown area of Madison, Lake County Courthouse Building and Grounds Superintendent Shane Fry fired up the 76 kW generator at the Public Safety Building.

Fry told the county commission last month that “the generator kick on like it’s supposed to.”

After 40 minutes, though, the generator’s water pump failed, and the generator gave out.

Luckily, Fry said, it was during the day, and they had a full crew, and all the departments all had a plan. A trailer generator was brought in to power the offices until electricity was restored.

“We learned a lot of lessons that day,” Fry said, “and everything went fine, but we did lose a generator.”

Replacing the water pump on a generator of that vintage would have been costly, Fry said, and they were unreliable anyway.

A new generator costs from $40,000-$50,000, and would have taken a couple of years to replace, allowing for engineering and mechanical studies, and a lengthy bid process, he added.

Enter Commission President Scott Pedersen, who is a board member on the Lake Area Improvement Council (LAIC). He mentioned the incident at an LAIC board meeting, and Executive Director Julie Gross had the perfect solution.

The LAIC had a 60 kW at the Heartland Center building. LAIC Board Member Floyd Rummel said it had been originally purchased for the data center located in the building. The center is no longer there, but LAIC had continued to maintain the generator.

The LAIC and the county commissioners, along with local contractors, began the process to transfer the generator to the county.

Everybody involved was on board with it, Fry said, and the unit is now installed and working.

“It is really nice,” Fry said.

“It was meant to be,” said Gross, adding that the LAIC board is “happy someone could use it. With county representation on the [LAIC] board, the pieces fell into place perfectly.”