Outage stats trending positive

The 2020 stats are in, and PRECorp’s power grid held up pretty well in terms of total power outages last year.
There were 1,066 power outages in 2020, a record low since this type of detailed record-keeping started in 2007.
There are many factors that contribute to changes in the outage numbers, but the milder weather in the latter half of 2020 reduced the outage numbers. That’s not to say there weren’t major weather events. There was a tornadic storm that plowed through Campbell County and Weston County in June, which not only broke several poles, but created outages that lasted for a day or longer. This skews the total minutes that members were out of power.
There was also a June derecho (wall of wind) that left behind broken poles in Campbell County. 
“We have a lot of exposure to extreme weather events because we have thousands of poles carrying thousands of miles of line in the open country of northeast Wyoming. Whenever there is a major storm, some of those poles crack under the pressure,” said PRECorp VP of System Operations Rich Halloran. “We also experience infrequent power supply issues where a provider outside our territory has an issue that only they can fix. These outages aren’t always connected to weather but take time to safely restore.”
In the past decade, PRECorp has seen vast reductions in outage frequency because greater attention is being paid to preventative maintenance of infrastructure starting at the substations and extending out to the single-phase distribution lines.
Another innovation that is scheduled to be completed this year is the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) which gives real-time reports of power quality, outages, and usage readings from each meter location. There will be many uses for this technology. One of those is improved response times and restoration of power. The AMI meters can notify dispatchers and line crews in seconds where an outage is occurring, enabling them to safely deploy resources to the right places at the right times.
The AMI will also help archive data and create predictive scenarios when combined with weather data. In the near future, PRECorp will have the ability to target areas of the system that are susceptible to weather damage such as icing and sustained winds, which cause galloping lines and power blips and outages.
“I commend the work of our line crews, dispatchers, engineering team, and member service representatives who coordinate all of this data behind the scenes,” Halloran said. 
“There is a lot of planning and training that goes into rolling a truck to the location of an outage. We continue to work diligently to provide more reliability on our power grid each and every year. We also appreciate the patience and support that our members show for our crews during those cold, dark nights restoring power.”