CEO’s Message – August 2024

Balancing Short-Term Inconvenience With Long-Term Safety

Seems like only 1 long, hot July ago we were still lamenting the long, cool, wet Spring we were enduring. Summer was indeed a bit late to the party, but since arriving, has been that 1 party guest that just doesn’t realize when everyone else has gone home.

We all love summer, but the hot weather does put added strain on our system. Columbia REA takes steps to protect our system and our members, from high temperatures.

We always follow a regular schedule of maintenance checks across our system to ensure that everything is in good working order. This process takes on added importance during extreme weather conditions, as increased usage across our system puts a heavier burden on all the lines, parts and pieces that carry electricity all across our service territory. See page 5 of this issue to learn more about our FLIR imaging checks, as well as a few very “illuminating” photos.

Of course, the summer season is also fire season. While our service territory does not include a lot of densely forested terrain loaded with fire fuels, the risk of wild grassland fire is very real, and we have already seen numerous small fires do damage to our system this season. At Columbia Rural Electric Association (REA), we take a “Prepare for the worst” approach to fire safety. Unfortunately, some of these additional steps can place an occasional additional burden on our members, too.

When we transition our system into Fire Safety Mode during the dry, hot months, it switches our recloser settings to “1-shot” mode. A recloser is like a circuit breaker in your home. When a fault is detected in the flow of electricity, the recloser automatically shuts off power. The recloser then tests the electrical line. If the problem was only temporary (a tree branch contacting a line, for example), then the recloser, as the name suggests, automatically “recloses” the circuit, restoring the flow of electricity. If a fault is detected again, the recloser locks open after a preset number of attempts (usually 3 or 4), isolating the faulted section from the main part of the system. In 1-shot mode, the recloser will not reset itself, it will remain open to avoid possibly creating a situation that could start a fire. The downside to this important and effective fire-prevention strategy is that it can create longer outage restoration times because a crew needs to be sent to the location and complete a visual inspection of the situation before reclosing the circuit manually and restoring power. Depending on where the incident occurs and the proximity and availability of a Columbia REA crew, this can take a while…considerably longer than the few seconds that a recloser in normal mode would need to interrupt, assess, and restore, the flow of electricity.

It’s always our top priority to deliver, safe, dependable, uninterrupted electricity to all of our members. Fire is a constant threat to our ability to fulfill that mission. It is unpredictable and the threat is unrelenting. We feel like the inconvenience of added safety measures is a necessary trade-off to protect the system, which in the long run, can protect you from even bigger problems and potentially higher costs.

Best,
Scott Peters
CEO