Keeping The Lights Ons
Access Energy Cooperative keeps detailed records of outages suffered by our members. We keep track of the total minutes each member is out of service and calculate an average each account is without power.
From 2003 to 2006, the number of minutes each account was without service has averaged 2.43 minutes per customer per year.
However! 2007 was a different story. Last year’s ice storm in February caused the majority of meters on our system to experience service interruptions for varied lengths. That storm was hard on our members and a challenge for our employees. It resulted in an increase in the average number of minutes each account experienced a service interruption to 14.77 minutes per account for 2007. At least 89% of those minutes were attributed to the ice storm.
We strive to provide the most reliable, safe, efficient power to your home or business as possible. We cannot, however, prevent damage incurred from Mother Nature like these ice storms. What we CAN do is respond to them as quickly as possible, and we can do things to help minimize the effects from those events.
We have stringent maintenance programs in place for the equipment that brings you power, including things like poles, lines, meters, OCR’s, transformers, switches, and other equipment. We also have a rotating maintenance schedule for vegetation that could pose a threat to your service and safety. The program attempts to cover 20% of our system each year. Last year we spent nearly $210,000 on brush control, basically in the Mt. Pleasant and Primrose areas.
Access Energy Cooperative reports this information on service reliability to the Iowa Utilities Board annually. Our employees are very proud of the safe, reliable, efficient service we provide to you!