GREEN COVE SPRINGS – The city’s frequent power outages don’t stem from one particular issue. Assistant City Manager and Public Works Director Mike Null said the recent outages were exacerbated by trees, lightning or rodents.

Last weekend it was bird that caused a brief outage. On Labor Day, power was out in 800 homes for several hours, and Null said it was likely a bad arrestor, a device used to protect the grid from lighting strikes. Two weeks ago on Ogle Bay Drive, the issue was a 20-year-old sectionalizing box. Null said it takes longer to find an underground issue

“Overhead problems are easier to see. Underground problems are harder to see, all the wires are underground,” Null said. “If you have melted wires between one box and the next, you don’t know until you start checking line by line.”

Null said the city is saved further outages thanks to reclosers, which try to switch the power back on three times, installed a few years.

“When folks see all these little blips and they have to reset their clocks, that’s inconvenient, but that blip is potentially in the place of a two-hour outage,” Null said. “Staff felt that was better for folks.”

In April, the city council approved a $10.7 million loan from State Bank in Jacksonville over three years to upgrade the power grid.

Magnolia Point would see more than $3.1 million in improvements by replacing underground cables and adding a third feed, according to a presentation provided by Hooper Electric, the city’s outsourced electricity management contractor.

“The infrastructure in Magnolia Point is overtaxed, it has been for a while. Some of the stuff is 30-plus years old, which is about at the end of it’s useful life if not past,” Null said. “We’ve got to get that third feed in to allow us to do some of those replacements.”

Null said an additional $700,000 rebuild electric system infrastructure on Roberts Street was necessary to Magnolia feed power.

“Every one of our customers is going to benefit from the loan,” Null said.

The city’s electric utility recently inspected a quarter of the city’s electric power poles, about 1,400 poles in all. A city release said 77 poles that failed inspection were being replaced. The city also aims to replace lines on State Road 16, County Road 209, Forbes Street, Pine and Cypress Avenues, strengthening voltage in numerous areas and bolstering fuse coordination to limit the scope of potential outages.

City Council Member Pam Lewis said the $10.7 million upgrade was much needed for the city to have a more reliable grid and said the improvements were important for the city’s expansion.

“We have a very old electric infrastructure,” Lewis said. “We’ve made so many improvements in the past eight years, it’s just amazing. It’s one more thing we really need to do.”