Welcome Back Spring

We all know the old saying about April showers bringing those May flowers. It’s a nice sentiment to help usher in spring as we look forward to putting away the winter coats, hats, gloves, and boots. It makes spring sound like a very pleasant time doesn’t it? What it fails to account for is the lightning, high winds, and occasional random tornado that bring down electric lines and cause extended power outages that can test the patience of the most understanding and satisfied cooperative member.

Cooperatives, by nature of their more rural existence, find themselves highly exposed during these times. Electric companies located in more urban settings tend to have less exposure due to a greater amount of wind blocks provided by a concentration of commercial buildings, dwellings and, in some cases, more underground lines. In contrast, cooperatives have many miles of overhead lines that run across open fields and along our country roads. Tipmont alone has a total of 1,837 miles of overhead distribution line. These lines are completely exposed to whatever Mother Nature decides to throw at us. She can be mean too! I know one Saturday two springs ago I watched out my back door as a powerful straight line wind literally crumpled my son’s wooden swing set into a pile of splinters. Seeing something like this made it all the more amazing that all the service lines to our rural home stayed up and we never lost power that day. We’re not always that fortunate. So how do we prevent outages under these conditions and what do we do when preventative measures fail and we experience outages? Let’s talk about prevention first.

Tipmont has a long range system plan and part of that plan involves work throughout the year to conduct maintenance on existing distribution facilities. We have defined maintenance programs for the equipment in our substations as well as the devices located on our distribution lines. Part of that program calls for the patrolling of lines from their origin at our substations to the last members on any given circuit. As we do these patrols we note potential problem areas and identify equipment we need to replace to provide the most reliable service possible. Once identified, depending on the issue, we either make the repair on the spot or, if it requires greater time and material, we schedule the work for a crew. We also focus on identifying the worst performing sections of distribution lines and replace a portion of these each year.

To compliment our work on the distribution system, we have a fully defined vegetation program to trim trees along our lines. I know this is not always a popular practice but without it we would have many more outages than we experience today. During the time of year when we experience high winds, trees can be a huge factor in the number of outages we experience due to their proximity to power lines.

Moving to outage response and restoration, we work with the Cooperative Response Center (CRC). This group manages a call center that maintains a staff to take your outage calls 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. In conjunction with our call answering capabilities, we have a group of employees that rotate weekly and are on call to respond at all times as well. To respond to outages as quickly as possible, our on call employees actually have a service truck at their home. When they receive a call they can proceed directly to the outage location. If a problem requires additional crews, we have a member of the management team on call with our lineman and they will immediately begin working to get additional resources on the way to the outage location.

The resources we have committed to our maintenance programs and to outage response are paying off. In 2009 we lowered the average total number of times each member experiences an outage from our 2008 levels. We have also lowered the total amount of time members are out of power over the year. Along with these improvements, the average number of minutes a member is out during each individual outage prior to having their power restored has improved as well.

Having said this, try to keep in mind these are system wide averages. I guarantee there is a member reading this article right now and saying, “this guy is full of it” because they personally experienced many outages this last year. I’m not denying we have trouble spots on our system and we have members that have rightfully been very frustrated as we try to trouble shoot to figure out exactly what it is causing their outages and blinking lights. This frustrates our employees as well as they take great pride in providing reliable electric service. The system will never be perfect but it is our intent to keep working to make it as absolutely reliable as we possibly can while balancing the cost involved.

There are a couple simple things you can do to help us, help you. If you experience blinking lights or frequent outages call us at 1-888-777-7271 and report the problem. We will do all we can to determine if the problem is on our system and try to get these issues corrected. Also, please make sure your phone numbers are updated on your account. Often times we need to communicate with our members in outage situations and it becomes difficult if we do not have a current phone number. If you need to update your number, just call one of your member service representatives at 1-800-726-3953 and they can help you take care of that!