Maintaining rural electric lines

“There are very few weather conditions we won’t go out in,” observes Dan Meier, 51, Operations Manager with Steele-Waseca Cooperative Electric. He mentions snowstorms with zero visibility and extreme thunderstorms.

 

He goes on to say that one of the best ways to assure power is delivered during extreme weather conditions is simply to make sure the power lines are well maintained and thus less likely to fail.

 

Steele-Waseca, according to Meier, provides electricity to about 11,500 meters in 1,200 square miles of territory touching on nine counties. The organization’s roots go back to the 1930s and ‘40s, when investors supported private companies delivering electrical power to in-town addresses, but could see no profit in stringing the miles of power lines needed to reach widespread rural homes and farms.

 

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal” included the “Rural Electrification Act,” which made loans available to farmers who wished to work together to arrange for power plants and electric conductor lines.

 

“Work together” was no mere euphemism: In many cases, crews of volunteer farm workers dug the holes and raised the poles into place themselves. Meier reveals that at least a few of the poles still supporting lines in the Steele-Waseca network are from those original installations: he says anyone paying attention would likely be able to identify those stretches, since the poles are about 100 feet further apart than their modern counterparts, and are not as tall, since farm equipment at that time was much smaller than today.

 

Many of those original poles were made of cedar, he adds, which has a reputation for resisting decay. It wasn’t long, though, before demand outstripped supply, given that cedars are relatively slow-growing trees.

 

Pine soaked in creosote became the industry standard until relatively recently, when more environmentally friendly preservatives began being applied in pressure chambers to help assure the entire log is infused.

 

Poles installed these days tend to be either Southern Yellow Pine or Northeastern Red Pine. Steele-Waseca typically uses poles anywhere from 40 to 55 feet in length weighing at least 1,000 pounds each.

 

It no longer takes a crew of strapping farm workers to install them, though. Steele-Waseca has 12 linemen who can make use of the cooperative’s five “bucket” trucks, two digger derrick trucks, and a skid loader which has an attachment capable of picking up a power pole from the ground, lifting and rotating it, then placing it in its pre-dug hole.

 

The equipment comes in handy, since the cooperative replaces between 11 and 15 miles of line each year, based on a four-year work plan. A private company has been engaged to check standing poles for any sign of rot. Meier says roughly 200 poles at risk of failing due to their age, decomposition or damage are replaced as needed each year. Whole stretches of line are replaced either due to age or because increased voltage is needed.

 

The full Steele-Waseca system includes about 1,800 miles of overhead lines and 500 miles of underground conductor; there are roughly 35,000 poles bearing the thousands of pounds of weight and atmospheric forces placed on the conductor wire.

 

When a line must be replaced, Meier says the lines are kept “hot” nearly the entire time. A typical procedure is to lean the existing poles to the side, then install the new ones standing upright. New conductor wire is strung. When the newly installed equipment is ready, transmission is transferred. When all goes well, customers along the line should only experience a very short interruption, or possibly none at all.

 

Meier finishes by saying he enjoys working at a non-profit cooperative rather than a for-profit utility. “My ‘bottom line’ is making sure we deliver safe, reliable, affordable electric power to our members,” he explains. “The focus is on integrity and doing the right thing rather than profits alone.”

 

He credits the cooperative’s board of directors, General Manager and the employees for keeping aware of member concerns and deciding the most fair way to meet everyone’s needs.

 

“It’s refreshing,” he says. “Although margins are necessary to be viable, making money is not the first concern–the welfare of our members is.”