We’ve made it through another winter, and except for a few occasional cold snaps, our linemen appreciate that this year’s cold months were milder than years past.

Moving into the growing season
As we enter the growing season, our focus now turns to conducting the annual inspections of our infrastructure, noting areas that took a hit over the last few months and will require pole change outs, new line rebuilds or vegetation management.

Ensuring the right of way is clear around our power lines is the best way to help prevent outages caused by limbs or other vegetation debris coming into contact with power lines and causing an outage. Sometimes, to do this, we may have to cut back the tree or obstruction in a way that makes it look a little funny, but I can assure you we follow best- practice pruning techniques that benefit both the tree and our lines. 

In the countryside, there is little we can do to control the volunteer trees that have grown into our right of way. But if you happen to be planting a tree this year, remember: Right tree, right place. A good reference for planting trees that do not interfere with the co-op’s rights of way can be found by visiting the Arbor Day Foundation website at www.arborday.org.

Maintaining reliable power infrastructure
In addition to line maintenance, line rebuilds and vegetation management, our crew has been working in our Bear Grove substation to replace insulators, and switch blades, regulators and other aged or worn equipment. If our poles and wires are the arteries of our system, our substations are the heart. They are our first line of defense against power interruptions, so our focus every year is to ensure each one is in the best possible shape.

As always, we welcome hearing from our member-consumers when there are problems so we can address them quickly. Feel free to call our office any time to report issues and be sure to have the address or specific location of the problem as well as your account number available. If we all work together, we can mitigate any damage that may occur during the summer storm season and keep your lights on.

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Josh Oltmann is the line superintendent
for Guthrie County REC.