A local electric provider has been awarded a mutual aid commendation by the American Public Power Association for lending aid during a bout of severe weather that moved through the area June 21st through 23rd.
According to a release, Kentucky public power utilities provider Princeton Electric Plant Board (PEPB) was recognized for recently sending crews to help Pennyrile Rural Electric Cooperative in Hopkinsville with power restoration efforts after severe storms rolled through the area.
Chris Burton, Operations Superintendent and Safety Director at PEPB, says it was hard to pin down the actual peak number of outages that resulted from the storms but at one point had seen some posts that indicated there were over 20,000 customers out. He added that he contacted Pennyrile on Saturday morning to let them know PEPB was willing to lend aid if it was needed and by that afternoon Pennyrile requested aid.
Burton noted that after Pennyrile accepted the offer of assistance, he then contacted Chris Melton, Electric Superintendent at Madisonville Municipal Utility Department, to see if they would be willing to send help and they agreed. Both companies then sent one 3-man crew each to help. The release states that crews worked from 1:30 Saturday afternoon to seven Sunday morning.
In an interview with the American Public Power Association, PEPB lineman, Seth Wyatt, who was part of the 3-man crew, stated that it’s good to be able to help your neighbors because if the roles were reversed, they would do the same. Another of the 3-man crew, Matt Hoard, PEPB line foreman, added that while on scene they had to assess the situation, find the trouble spots, and proceed to do their own testing and grounding to fix the issue.
Burton explained that during the storm event, Princeton only had 30 residential customers lose power for a short duration of time, which in turn allowed the public power utility to send help right away to Pennyrile.
Power has since been restored to all customers from the storm related outages and all crew members have returned home from the storm work.
Madisonville Municipal Utility Department, who assisted Pennyrile, and Paducah Power Systems, which sent crews to help Jackson Purchase Energy on Saturday, June 22nd, were also recognized for providing mutual aid by the American Public Power Association, which is the service organization for the more than 2,000 U.S. community-owned electric utilities across the country that serve more than 47 million Americans.
