By Chris Hill, SDMEA Director of Municipal Electric Services Howard
Kody Dawson is the Electrical Superintendent of Howard. Kody and I have had some interaction with each other while at conferences and have some things in common. For example, we both shoot shotguns left handed (although, he is a much better shot than I am), we both graduated in 2001, and we both have excellent beards. Ok, two out of three is close enough. Everyone that has met me knows that I cannot grow a good beard. Kody can.
Howard Water Tower
There are decorative lights on main street that he will be using LED in as they burn out. He also plans to change out the aluminum poles on the main street boulevard. The newer housing in Howard does have underground services and Kody plans to start trenching some secondary underground this year and hopes to continue to make progress towards underground in the next 5 years.
Chad Podhradsky, Kody Dawson and Troy Loudenberg
Kody took over as the Electrical Superintendent in 2012. Like a lot of our municipal electrics, he is a one-man crew. He has been working on transitioning the street lights to LED and lights up the town with 50-Watt lights. He did use 250-Watt on the school route and main street, and 400Watt on Highway 34. Kody has had no complaints about the transition to LED from the residents and mentions that everyone seems to be very positive about the change.
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Howard, like other municipal electric utilities, has also been looking at some possible meter upgrades and has been doing some research on AMI. They also currently have a load management system. Howard has several businesses in their industrial area which take a good amount of the load. The city also utilized an economic development grant from Heartland Consumers Power District to help upgrade their services for a building that was vacant for 5 years for the transition of Quality Custom Meats to begin operating. The City also maintains a campground, which Kody tells
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SOUTH DAKOTA MUNICIPALITIES
