PROJECT PROFILES
CO-OPS DEPLOYING NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Editor’s Note: Project Profiles is a new column featuring short synopses of technology projects undertaken by NRECA’s member co-ops.
If your co-op has begun or recently completed a system upgrade, please send details and contact information to [email protected].
BY TODD H. CUNNINGHAM
HOWARD
SWITCHING TO LEDS
H
oward Electric Cooperative has
decided to convert its outdoor
lighting to LED, replacing the high
pressure sodium (HPS) lights that
operate from dusk to dawn. The col-
audit, co-op officials decided to replace the office’s fluorescent fixtures
with LED alternatives. Like the outdoor models, they will use just a fraction of the energy consumed by the
fluorescents and will allow the co-op
to avoid the expense of tube replacements for the next decade or longer.
Credit: Brandon Lightfoot
A Howard Electric Co-op crewman installs an LED light.
or produced by the sodium lights
was unpopular with some, the lights
don’t last as long as LED lights, and
the Fayette, Mo.-based co-op faced
increasing maintenance costs as the
units aged.
Co-op staff worked with lighting
specialist Rob Kirkpatrick to evaluate
its options. They settled on Evluma
AreaMax LED (evluma.com) duskto-dawn lighting. The co-op will never install another HPS light; if one requires service for any reason, it will be
replaced with an AreaMax LED.
Kirkpatrick, now general manager of Cooperative Business Lighting
Partners (CBLP), says Howard Electric’s LED lights will reduce power use
by two-thirds and should require no
maintenance for 20 years.
The co-op is also looking indoors,
working with CBLP to update its office lighting. After a full lighting
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Contact: Howard Electric Cooperative, Richard Fowler, 660-248-3311;
Cooperative Business Lighting Partners,
Rob Kirkpatrick, 317-402-2562; Evluma, David Tanonis, 206-720-1798.
OZARKS, NISC DEAL
ON DATA USE
O
zarks Electric Cooperative has
selected National Information
Solutions Cooperative (NISC;
nisc.coop) as the primary provider
of software to help the co-op in collecting, sharing, and using system
data. Based in Fayetteville, Ark.,
Ozarks serves members in nine counties of northwest Arkansas and northeast Oklahoma.
Carl Thomas, Ozarks Electric’s
manager of information technology, says the co-op chose NISC’s
iVUE enterprise package because it
incorporates a wide array of elements,
including customer care and billing,
accounting, mapping, and outage
management. The package will replace
a number of systems and integration
points that are currently in use.
“Now we have one contact, one
place to go,” Thomas says, adding
that the system will also allow the
co-op to better protect members’
personal information.
Ozarks Electric has already started
its migration to the new system and
expects the process to be completed
by next May, followed by a few additional months of training. Adoption
of iVUE will allow the co-op “to be
more efficient, to save money, and
to offer members more services,”
Thomas says.
Contact: Ozarks Electric Cooperative, Carl Thomas, 800-521-6144;
NISC, Jeanne Davis, 866-999-6472,
ext. 2307.
SOUTH CENTRAL,
TRI-COUNTY
CONTRACT FOR
OPERATIONS
SYSTEMS
S
outh Central Power Company
in Ohio and Tri-County Electric
Membership Cooperative in North
Carolina have contracted with Futura
Systems (futuragis.com) for software
to bolster several key operations.
South Central Power indicated
that it will work with Futura to take
its geographic information system
(GIS) and staking operations “to the
next level.” The co-op reported that
the selection committee was seeking
to satisfy engineering as well as GIS
needs from a single vendor providing a
tightly integrated solution.
CO-OPS SEEK
OPERATIONAL
GAINS
B
ARC Electric Cooperative in Virginia, Craighead Electric Cooperative in Arkansas, and Peninsula
Light Company in Washington State
have contracted with Milsoft Utility
Solutions (milsoft.com) for operations-enhancing systems.
BARC chose the company’s geographic information system (GIS),
which will enable it to create, manage, and use system maps and handle
geospatial data describing the location
and attributes of electric lines and
equipment. The co-op also selected
Milsoft’s outage management system
(OMS), which will enable it to
detect, evaluate, and respond to
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Credit: Whitney Prather Duvall
PROJECT PROFILES CO-OPS DEPLOYING NEW TECHNOLOGIES
“From engineering’s perspective,
they wanted a stable, mature, and
powerful staking application,” says
Tonya Hixenbaugh, South Central
Power’s director of project management, continuous improvement &
training. “From the GIS department’s
perspective, we wanted to ensure
that our data integrity is maintained
and that the quality of the data is upheld. We concluded that Futura was
the best vendor to fulfill our needs
and requirements.”
In North Carolina, Tri-County Electric’s Manager of Engineering Tony Grantham said Futura will
help the co-op not only to streamline engineering functions but also
to improve the customer experience.
“Integration with the CIS [customer
information system] and field staking
without using third-party software
was important to us.” He said the coop also likes Futura’s additional features, such as project tracking.
Contact: South Central Power Cooperative, Tonya Hixenbaugh,
800-282-5064; Tri-County EMC,
Tony Grantham, 866-254-8100;
Futura Systems, Nichole Eshbaugh,
214-842-3772.
An Owen Electric team conducts a mock aerial damage assessment.
customer service outages more quickly
and effectively.
Craighead is purchasing Milsoft
Engineering Analysis (EA) to create,
maintain, and use an accurate, detailed model of its electric distribution
system for planning and operations.
Peninsula is buying Milsoft Hosted Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
to improve its ability to communicate with customers and employees.
The system will allow consumers to
report outages without encountering
busy signals and lets the co-op contact
them with updates on outages and
other events more economically and
reliably than permitted by its current
telecom hardware and software.
Contact: BARC Electric Cooperative, 800-846-2272; Craighead Electric
Cooperative, 800-794-5012; Peninsula
Light Company, 888-809-8021; Milsoft, Brian Carr, 800-344-5647.
OWEN ELECTRIC
ELEVATES STORM
ASSESSMENT
O
wen Electric Cooperative has
conducted a successful airborne
storm damage assessment test using the GISbiz geoOrganizer suite.
The Kentucky-based co-op took the
system up in a helicopter, as well as in
trucks, to perform mock damage assessments on assets marked with color-coded ribbons.
With the helicopter maintaining
speeds of 40 miles per hour at an altitude of 200 feet, co-op employees
were able to view a map of Owen’s
equipment, create damage assessments
complete with photos, GPS coordinates, and audio recordings, and sync
from the helicopter and trucks.
The exercise participants were able
to view all of this information from
the co-op office using geoDASH,
the system’s operations dashboard.
According to GISbiz, there were no
problems syncing the application from
the air and informing the operations
command center of happenings in
the field.
Owen Electric previously utilized
the geoOrganizer suite to speed up inspections of power lines and associated
assets serving the Kentucky Speedway.
Rusty Williams, the co-op’s senior
vice president of operations and technology, termed that exercise “basically a test run in preparation for future
storm damage assessments.”
Contact: Owen Electric Cooperative, Rusty Williams, 800-372-7612,
ext. 3559; GISbiz, Brandon Fyffe,
615-600-4166.