Maintaining a safe and reliable electric system requires a significant investment in terms of budgeted funding, a cross section of employees, proper engineering and operation plans, and equipment. It gives members peace-of-mind knowing Lake Country Power is “on top of it,” to build and maintain a safe and reliable system that’ll serve today’s membership and generations to come.
Overall, this year’s total capital investment for engineering and operations is more than $5.3 million to help meet LCP’s mission – to deliver safe and reliable electric service for all members. These investments will be used for more than 27 improvement projects, pole replacements, aged OH (overhead) and UG (underground) line replacements, substation work, and relocating lines for better access and faster outage restoration.
“Some of the factors we look at are age of the line and poles, outage history of the line, number of members served, as well as load amps on the line,” said Jake Chrzanowski, senior electrical engineer. “We also look at which lines can be rerouted or fed differently to improve reliability for members and accessibility for crews.”
A significant amount of this year’s work will address aged lines, some of which date back to the 1940s. Thin lines don’t handle today’s electric load as well as it did when the early co-op pioneers first strung thin copper wires to electrify the countryside. In fact, aged lines account for nearly 15 percent of all outages.
Today, before any lines are replaced, it must meet at least one of the following sets of criteria as established by Lake Country Power’s engineering department:
- Age of the pole and line.
- If the line serves more than 50 members.
- LCP has 147 feeders. Each is categorized in numerical order by outage duration. The feeders that give the most frequent outages are targeted for replacement.
- Engineers also look for lines that are heavily loaded.
“Just like anything else, our distribution system has a useful life that requires us to monitor, maintain and replace aging infrastructure,” added Jake. “It helps ensure a safe electrical system for the public and our employees, while helping improve reliability.”
Chrzanowski also stated that by rebuilding LCP’s infrastructure, it helps the co-op minimize long-term costs by reducing maintenance and outage costs. It also helps LCP prepare for future growth.
This year’s construction plan addresses all four sets of criteria. This map provides a broad overview of the general locations where construction work will happen on Lake Country Power’s distribution system in 2019.