WASHINGTON ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE LOCAL PAGES
MESSAGE FROM THE GENERAL MANAGER
Why does my power go out?
D
espite Washington Electric’s best efforts, from time to time, the power goes out. Even though we cannot guarantee our members 100% reliability all the time, we take great steps to find ways we can improve our track record of keeping your lights on. And while we know every power outage can be a great inconvenience, when you look at our record of how much time the power is on, it is very impressive. Year-todate for 2021, our members have had the power on for 99.85% of the time, on average. So, exactly why does the power go out at times, and what is Washington Electric doing to improve reliability? The graph below shows causes and durations of power outages that have occurred thus far in 2021. As you can see, trees are the largest contributor with 62% of the time our members have been without power being due to trees coming in contact with our lines (usually trees located outside of our rightsof-way falling into the lines). Washington Electric and the contractors we hire work very hard to keep our rights-ofway clear to reduce tree-related outages. In 2021, we have budgeted $1,850,000 for these efforts, which is a significant portion of our total annual operating budget. We also
evaluate relocating lines that are scheduled to be rebuilt due to age closer to roads with fewer trees to cause issues. When cost-justified, we will even replace overhead lines in heavily wooded areas with underground lines. Due to our natural surroundings in southeast Ohio, I believe trees will always be our biggest cause of outages, but we hope to see the numbers of outages and outage times reduced as we continue these efforts.
Jeff Triplett GENERAL MANAGER
The next greatest contributor of outages are ones that are actually experienced on the American Electric Power (AEP) lines feeding our substations. While these transmission-related outages lead to a lot of member outage time due to a significant number of members being fed from one substation, the frequency of these outages is small. For example, there have only been five transmission-related power outages thus far in 2021, but these have caused 15% Continued on page 20
4%
3% 4%
5%
Trees Transmission (AEP)
7%
Defective equipment
62%
Scheduled outages Unknown
15%
Small animal All other
AUGUST 2021 • OHIO COOPERATIVE LIVING 19
