By Chris Hill, Director of Municipal Electric Services
Vermillion
See Red? Vermillion is home of Monty Munkvold’s favorite teams. He loves the University of South Dakota Coyotes and he loves Vermillion. However, Monty may be getting sick of red colored vehicles. Monty Munkvold began as the Electrical Superintendent for the City of Vermillion just before the 2016 SDML Annual Conference, which means he has been the Electrical Superintendent about the same amount of time that I have been with SDMEA.
five years and Monty and the crew are looking forward to the remote disconnect. Being a college town, annually they have around 300 disconnects and re-connects in the month of May alone!
Monty also informed me that they are working on a new substation just to the north of Vermillion. He said that the city will be looped and the substation should be completed in March 2018.
Site of the new Substation
Monty has been with the City of Vermillion for 31 years. He began as an apprentice and has been working in the Electrical Department ever since. In Monty’s tenure the City of Vermillion has converted to nearly 100% underground lines. All of the primary is currently underground. They are also about half done converting all street lights to LED. Vermillion Municipal Utilities is also working on installing a new Automated Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and will be going with Eaton as their vendor. The project is expected to be completed in about 44
Vermillion has a total of 10 employees in the electrical department with one electrical contractor on staff. Karen Harris is the Operations Manager of the department. I had a great time visiting with Monty and look forward to returning to Vermillion next spring to see the completed substation! Monty’s enthusiasm for his city made it easy to see why his HOMETOWN is great!
On a side note, Monty was asked to attend the Missouri River Energy Services Smart Grid meeting in September to discuss the process of working with Eaton on their AMI installation. Core and Main (formally HD Supply) SOUTH DAKOTA MUNICIPALITIES
