Working to Keep Your Power On

In mid-December, heavy snow and ice centered in Mont- calm, Mecosta and Isabella counties knocked out power to about 5,000 of our members on a cold Sunday morning.

We called all available line crews in from both Blanchard and Portland to work on restoring power. Although condi- tions worsened during the day as ice accumulated on the lines, power was back on by midnight for all but about 400 members. Crews went back out first thing Monday morning and worked all day, and completed repairs to every affected member by 5 p.m.

Four days later, I had the opportunity to ride along with Matt Miller, our manager of electric operations, as he checked on the crews and repairs. Even several days after the storm had passed, we could see where ice had accumulated a couple of inches thick on the wires, weighing them down and putting stress on the poles and other equipment.

It was a long couple of days for our crews, but it could have taken a week to restore all the power if your cooperative had not, over the past several years, invested heavily in system upgrades and clearing vegetation away from line rights-of-way.

Yes, we do still have some problem areas where trees are growing too close to the power lines, or where older equipment is one ice storm away from being overloaded. But those areas have become smaller and smaller every year, and they’re on our to-do list.

Beyond the big, multiple-mile work plan upgrades, our crews have also taken on an operations and maintenance (O&M) program in which they look for smaller, potentially troublesome spots and repair them before something happens.

Another O&M project is sectionalizing, where we install circuit breakers and other equipment to break up long stretches of line, reducing the number of members affected if an outage does occur.

All these projects and investments are paying off because of your support and cooperation. When you allow us to build a power line on your right-of-way; when you plant trees and bushes away from power lines; when you call us to report a possible problem you’ve seen, you are helping to reduce outages and keep the lights on for your family and neighbors.

Keeping track of the little things...
As a side note, the cooperative’s annual inventory was completed in late October with an adjustment of $701. Since a total of $770,412 in materials moved through inventory during the year, that’s shrinkage of just less than one-tenth of 1 percent. The employees involved in working with inventory every day, handling the materials or accounting for them, did an outstanding job again this year.