IBEW 1245 HOME |
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HISTORY FOCUS: •PACIFIC GAS AND ELECTRIC •SACRAMENTO MUNICIPAL UTILITY DISTRICT •SIERRA PACIFIC POWER
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| 1. INAUSPICIOUS BEGINNING
Leonard Williams remembers well the night SMUD took over Sacramento’s electric system from Pacific Gas and Electric. The transfer was scheduled to take place at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, January 1, 1947. Some PG&E workers, including Williams, had hired on with SMUD a month earlier to help with the transition. "I was a troubleman," Williams recalls. "We were over here ready to go to work when SMUD took over at midnight." Williams didn’t have to wait long for trouble. "The first call we got was a SMUD call—their own office," Williams relates with a chuckle. "Down at the California Fruit building where they had set up their office. They had one of the old panels in there and it blew up. They started to work, then boom, they blew their fuses." What could any self-respecting troubleman do? "We got a red tag hung on it," Williams remembers. "Made them very unhappy. Had the city condemn the board. First call."
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2: A JUMBLED SYSTEM SMUD managers knew they had a challenge on their hands when they took over PG&E’s electric distribution operations in the Sacramento area. But without a crystal ball, there was no way they could know just how big that challenge would prove to be. The physical system itself was in poor condition and poorly integrated. It included a jumbled assortment of distribution voltages: 2200, 2300, 2400, 4160, and 4800 volts. An independent distribution system acquired from hop ranches ran at 6,900 volts. Some equipment dated back to 1895. On the first day of January, 1947, SMUD found itself in possession of an antique—and with a backlog of 3,000 applications for service. During the first decade of operation, through 1956, the number of electric customers would double. Peak demand would increase 228%. Distribution substations would grow in number from 24 to 96. Bringing the electric distribution system—and Sacramento County itself—fully into the 20th Century was a big job. A job for linemen.
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