On the evening of August 10, severe storms with high winds rolled through our service territory. At one point, over 10,000 homes were out of power, over 40% of our total membership. The response of our team was nothing short of heroic.
I’ll begin with our lineman. Nearly every lineman we employ was out in the field all night long working to restore power. Thanks to their over and above efforts, almost everyone was restored by midnight. Although our linemen deserve plenty of praise, our operations analysts also played a big role. And, they worked through the night as well.
Our operations analysts work in what I refer to as “Tipmont’s brain.” They’re responsible for coordinating the linemen, making sure that time in the field is spent efficiently. The room they work in looks like Mission Control at NASA. They constantly monitor our entire electric system overlaid on a GIS map, our SCADA system, and weather information. Both our linemen and operations analysts worked through the night after a full day at the office. Just when we thought we were back to normal operations, another transmission outage struck, affecting over 2,000 members in Montgomery and Fountain Counties. Back to work they went.
The lines that deliver energy from the generation source to our substation are known as transmission lines. The transmission lines that feed our substations are owned and operated by Duke Energy and Wabash Valley Power. In this case, Duke informed us that a transmission pole was damaged and it would be some time before repairs would be complete.
Knowing that the transmission outage was likely to last for some time, they switched load from another of our substations to get your power back on faster. Switching load is a relatively new capability we have thanks to a new SCADA system Tipmont invested in a few years ago. It allows us to restore your power much more quickly than waiting for the transmission feed to return to our substation.
Our team had already worked most of the night, but they pushed on because of their dedication to you. Whether it’s delivering state-of-the-art broadband or safe, affordable and reliable energy, our commitment and dedication to you will never change.
