NAS KEFLAVIK, Iceland — Power outages are more frequent in the summer at NAS Keflavik, Iceland, than during the harsh winters.

But that is the plan of the Public Works utilities line shop.

“Every summer, we go around to every transformer and line to clean them up and make sure everything looks OK,” said Petty Officer 1st Class Augusto Saulo, a sailor working in the shop.

The work is done to take advantage of the extra hours of summertime daylight. The sun provides enough light to work late into the night at this base not far from the Arctic Circle.

“We use the extra hours of daylight and nicer weather in the summer to do preventive maintenance so that we have fewer 2 a.m. calls in the winter when it’s freezing and the wind is blowing 50 [or] 60 miles per hour,” Saulo said.

He said the outages are well-advertised so people know that their home or workplace will be losing power while maintenance is performed.

The 13 Seabees and seven civilians in the shop maintain the flow of thousands of volts a day through 10 feeder lines, consisting of 230 miles of electrical cable that pass through 100 transformers distributing power to buildings on the base.

“We have a lot of things to look out for because we don’t ever want to have an unforeseen power outage,” Saulo said. “So we work really hard at making sure all of our equipment is in good working order and that maintenance is conducted routinely.”

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