The city of Paullina has approved planned power outages for July. The first outage took a little longer than expected. The second has been postponed.
NIPCO is moving an electrical switch about half a mile west from where it currently sits in the middle of a farm field/section. The newly relocated transmission switch will be along the road while the new power line will be rebuilt along the same route as the existing. These lines are located a mile east of the Highway 10 west/Highway 59 north intersection.
Electrical switches play an important role in our power system – they help control the flow of electricity from one line to another, essentially acting like traffic directors for electrical power. By upgrading the new switch with improved communications, remote capability and increased capacity, the relocated switch allows NIPCO crews to reach the equipment faster without having to access a landowner’s property for ongoing maintenance.
The half mile of line being worked on has recently been transferred from the City of Paullina to NIPCO. That gives NIPCO full ownership, operation and maintenance responsibilities of that half mile stretch of power line. The Paullina Council took this action during a Council Meeting in September of 2024. This is good news for Paullina and surrounding area residents because NIPCO is upgrading and strengthening electric infrastructure that is more than 50 years old. 
The City of Paullina Council has approved scheduled outages of that ? mile of line. One occurred on July 3, and the other one was scheduled for this week but got pushed back.
In the early morning hours of July 3, NIPCO shut off power for 4.5 hours to begin safely disconnecting the old equipment that needed to be moved and rebuilt. Now we’re ready for the final step: connecting power to the new switch and rebuilt power line.
This final work is scheduled for the overnight hours of July 24 (midnight to 6am), with a backup date of July 25 (midnight to 6am) if needed. The work will take 4-6 hours to complete. The Paullina Council approved the time change for the outage at a special meeting on Thursday July 10.
NIPCO had to delay this work by one week because the concrete foundation that anchors the switch equipment needed more time to cure and reach the proper strength. Unfortunately, this type of construction work depends heavily on weather conditions.
These are 69-kilovolt power lines that supply electricity to much of the Paullina and many other rural and municipal loads in the county.