Truckee Donner Public Utility District
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"TDPUD recognized for Transparent Financial Reporting for fifth year in a row," Truckee Donner Public Utility District was awarded the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting from the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada (GFOA) for the fifth year in a row. Read more here.
Truckee Donner PUD, Truckee Fire Call on Community to Keep Hydrants Clear of Snow," Truckee Donner Public Utility District and Truckee Fire Protection District are joining forces to encourage community members to help keep our community safe by adopting a fire hydrant this winter. Read more here.
"Truckee Donner PUD Board Approves Major Capital Investments to Start 2026" The TDPUD board kicked off their January and February board meetings by approving capital investments in TDPUD’s water system, learning about enhancements to TDPUD’s electric reliability tracking and approving a power cost adjustment credit to customers. Read more here.
TDPUD Press Releases
TDPUD Outages Recap & Preparedness
Thunder storms, animals, transmission, and wildfire mitigation causing summer outages.
PDF Version of Press Release:
Media Contact: Steven Poncelet
Truckee Donner PUD
530-582-3951
For Immediate Release
TDPUD Electric Outages and Customer Preparedness
Thunder storms, animals, transmission, and wildfire mitigation causing summer outages.
Truckee, Calif. (August 4 2020) – People who live in Truckee or visit frequently understand that power outages caused by big storms and our natural environment are part of mountain living. Truckee Donner Public Utility District’s (TDPUD’s) dedicated staff work hard to prevent power outages and respond quickly when they do occur. While the causes of winter outages are somewhat obvious (i.e. big winter storms and the aftermath), the causes of summer outages can be harder to understand.
These outages occur primarily for the following reasons:
- Weather including thunderstorms and high winds;
- Animals getting into our equipment;
- NV Energy transmission outages; and
- Changes in operations to prevent wildfires.
TDPUD is a transmission dependent utility of NV Energy. This means that power is not generated locally and TDPUD relies on NV Energy’s transmission system for our electrical supply. While NV Energy’s reliability is generally good, transmission outages do occur and are beyond TDPUD’s control. For example, a transmission outage was the cause of Sunday night’s outage which impacted customers in Tahoe Donner and Donner Lake.
In addition, TDPUD wildfire mitigation safety practices increase the duration of power outages during wildfire season which extends into the summer and fall months. New California laws and regulations require that TDPUD modify operations to minimize the chance of ignition. In many cases, TDPUD is required to visually patrol all circuits in an outage to ensure that restoring power does not cause a fire. The end result is longer outages during wildfire season.
“TDPUD takes reliability very seriously and have made significant improvements over the years” said Joe Horvath, TDPUD electric utility director “Unfortunately, outages do happen and necessary wildfire mitigation safety practices mean somewhat longer outages as we keep our community safe during wildfire season.”
TDPUD does have a web-based outage management system where customers can get information on electric outages. Also, TDPUD’s customer service team and call center are always available to receive customer calls. Please visit www.tdpud.org or call 530-587-3896 to make sure your contact information is up to date and for more information.
About Truckee Donner PUD:
TDPUD is a public utility district created in 1927 and overseen by a locally-elected board of directors. TDPUD is a not-for-profit entity that provides the greater Truckee area with reliable and high-quality water and power services, while guiding the community to conserve resources. For more information about TDPUD, call 530-587-3896 or visit tdpud.org.
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Media Contacts
Steven Poncelet, Strategic Affairs & Public Information Director | stevenponcelet@tdpud.org, 530-582-3951
Alex Spychalsky, Communications Program Manager | alex@tdpud.org, 530-582-3986