By: Jerry Weber
Operations Manager

I’m not found of the term “construction season.” It doesn’t really apply to Northern Electric. We build line year-round and don’t have an off-season! Even during winter, we are busy replacing aging infrastructure. Only severe weather events or other safety-related considerations prevent us from working in the field.

It is construction season in the sense that new service requests have been pouring in. From requests to add service to new bins to installing line to reach a new house, we are a growing cooperative! That’s why we construct our work plan to include new loads.

The Work Plan

Every four years, Northern Electric puts together a work plan that lays out our projects for the next four years. Our infrastructure is evaluated by NEC staff as well as our engineering firm, Power System Engineering (PSE).

This year, Northern electric staff will meet with our engineers to create the next four-year plan. The engineers will look at our whole system for places where voltage issues may occur during peak loading. We also look at tree issues, aged lines, and places we’ve had outages. Then we decide whether those areas are better served by underground or overhead lines. PSE will bring forward their recommendations, and we bring forward ours.

Limited by time, and also by budget. The work plan is pretty comprehensive. Each project lists out the timing, materials needed, and estimated prices for both labor and materials. Unfortunately, costs for some items, like crossarms, poles, and underground cable, have increased over 50%. Project costs need to be adjusted annually.

Northern Electric builds for longevity. Some of our infrastructure currently in use is from the 1950s! After nearly 80 years of use, those lines and poles need to be replaced.

Although we try our best, we don’t always accomplish 100% of our work plan. New services and outages take priority over our projects. Repairing infrastructure after an accident, like a vehicle hitting a pole or digging into underground cable, can have a huge impact on our ability to complete projects. The funds and labor that were dedicated to improving reliability are then used to replace infrastructure that might not have otherwise needed updating. Depending on the extent of damage, we might lose a day of work, we might lose a week or more.

Any projects that don’t get completed will be re-examined before rolling over to the next work plan. We’ll assess whether the project is still feasible, if there is a better route, or if added infrastructure has alleviated the low voltage issues.

This year

A couple of the projects slated for this year include finishing updates around Richmond Lake, getting infrastructure ready for new loads north of Aberdeen, and improving voltage near Ashton.

The Richmond Lake project is a multi-part project that is partially rolling over from last year. We bored under the lake to connect the east and west sides of the lake, creating a loop. Now we need to do the cleanup and connection work to get the line energized.

Just north of Ashton, we’ll be replacing five miles of single-phase line with three-phase. The single-phase line didn’t have enough capacity to cover all the demands on that line. Changing to three-phase will help us better balance our system. In addition, we’re adding infrastructure to accommodate growth north of Aberdeen.

Planning has started on our 2027-2031 work plan.