CEO’s Message – January 2025

Time Waits For No One

Do you ever feel like calling a timeout on… well, everything, just to catch your breath for a minute? Yeah, me too. But unfortunately, I’ve never found that strategy to be very successful.

In order to keep your electricity moving safely and efficiently to your homes and businesses, we here at Columbia REA have to keep moving as well. So we will charge headlong into the new year, with a full slate of projects and upgrades to help keep your lights on, your homes at the right temperature, and your business operations running smoothly.

On our System Operations side, our Sun Harbor substation will be getting a new 3-phase transformer to replace the 3 single-phase transformers that have been in place there for a very long time.

“These large substation transformers can perform very well for decades,” notes Jeff Murphy, Operations and Engineering Manager for Columbia REA. “After 50-plus years on the job, the Sun Harbor transformers are still operational, but the long-term improvements in dependability, operational efficiency, and environmental impact that we will see will more than offset the financial impact of replacing them.”

And as we do nearly every year, we will need to replace a couple of vehicles. Our small service bucket trucks are our most heavily used vehicles. These all-purpose custom rigs are a bit more maneuverable in tight places than the big bucket trucks and are able to reach the vast majority of pole tops and other high places that our linemen need to reach, so those trucks get put through the paces on a daily basis. In 2025, we will retire 2 of our older small bucket trucks, and welcome 2 new trucks into the fleet.

On the more tech-based side of things, 2025 will see continuing improvements to our cyber-security protections. This is not unique to 2025, obviously, as cyber-security has become a major part of our daily operations, as well as a significant budgetary line item every year.

“Fortunately, these security upgrades will also boost our operational analytics capabilities, which will give us more data in real-time, relayed via the internet, from our system,” adds Brendan Johnson, Manager of IT and Member Services. “We will be able to more easily detect inefficiencies on our lines, hot spots, failing or near-failing hardware in the field, overloaded areas along the system, and other information. All of these things can help us avoid potential outages and shorten outage time when it does happen.”

These are just a few of the projects and plans we have for 2025, and yes, these all probably sound expensive, and they are. All of the improvements, upgrades, and high-tech capabilities that we take on are designed to improve our reliability, cut down on outage time, maximize system security, and continue to serve you, our members, in the best way we possibly can.

Best,

Scott Peters, CEO