Out go the lights… now what?

Out go the lights… now what?

WM Utility Commission takes a look at power outage reports

news@theeveningtimes.com

The phone rings off the hook every time it happens. Power outages light up the phone at the West Memphis Utilities just as fast as the monitoring equipment can report outage trouble. Electric Superintendent Mike Downing knows it all too well, and instituted regular power outage reports for the city utilities commission to examine.

“How Long does it take for you to know there is an outage,?” asked commissioner Jerry Burns during the October commission meeting “Not long at all because the phone is jumping off the hook,” replied Downing.

Downing reported 237 spot outages in the city so far this year and categorized them. Since the reporting is rather new, the superintendent started by defining outage for the commissioners.

“When power is off to one customer or more customers for an extended period of time that we need to respond to,” said Downing.

“What is not is a momentary blink,” said Utilities General Manager Todd Pedersen.

“We know by the number of calls and the area they are coming from how wide spread an outage is,” said Downing.

Faulty equipment was the reason for most outages so far this year with 68 recorded in the city. Transformer problems accounted for five other instances.

Trees, 34, storms, 28, and wildlife, 29, have accounted for the remainder of the outages when determinations were made. Miscellaneous and unknown causes made 73 mysterious electric service breaks so far this year.

One of the reasons for the new outage report is to help attract new businesses to the city. Already offering the rock bottom energy prices to lure businesses, West Memphis Utilities power reliability is second a factor businesses with the latest generation of electric controls examine.

“We started monitoring this because it is a good indices for businesses coming in,” said Pedersen. “Industries want to know about our outages and our momentary blips because those that have PLCs, micro electronics, needing back up batteries, can be effected.”

By John Rech