Rural Iowa electric cooperatives share resources after storms

Video by Jim Slosiarek/The Gazette.

After a massive ice storm in April took out more than 200 utility poles and four electrical substations in Lyons County, 20 linemen from neighboring rural electric cooperatives and 40 linemen from a contractor worked around the clock to restore service.

Such mutual aid agreements play a critical role in the restoration of electrical service in rural communities after a storm, according to Kim Colberg, general manager of Linn County Rural Electric Cooperative in Marion.

"We had a big storm here in Linn County within the last couple of months," Colberg said. "Our guys had been out all night and it was becoming a long, drawn-out process requiring us to send people home for rest periods.

"We called our state association, which normally coordinates mutual aid requests. We received permission to call our neighbors at Maquoketa Valley REC in Anamosa for assistance.

"The folks at Maquoketa Valley dropped what they were doing in the middle of the day and sent us eight linemen and four big trucks. There's just no way you can rebuild a system without the assistance of other people."

While mutual aid is common for investor-owned utilities such as Alliant Energy and MidAmerican Energy, RECs also come to each other's rescue in the aftermath of storms. Linemen from Iowa rural electric cooperatives have traveled to other states to render assistance to fellow RECs.

"Our guys have traveled to Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, South Dakota and many other states," Colberg said. "One of our guys, Steve Trumpold, keeps a map in the shop showing all states where he has traveled to give mutual aid over the years."

Trumpold traveled to the boot heel of Missouri to help RECs get power restored after a rainstorm washed out utility poles. Trucks were loaded on large barge-sized sleds pulled by Caterpillar tractors to traverse rain-saturated ground to erect new poles and restore service.

Mutual aid agreements were strengthened over the past decade when the American Public Power Association worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association to create the APPA-NRECA Mutual Aid Agreement.

Almost every electric cooperative and 1,000 public power utilities have signed it, according to Mike Hyland, senior vice president of engineering services for the American Public Power Association. The single-page document spells out expectations for mutual aid.

No utility is required to provide assistance to another utility when asked. However, if it does decide to help, there is the expectation that its crews will be paid, whether or not FEMA has declared an emergency.

Each state REC association has a mutual aid agreement, which can run to several pages in length. The detailed document typically covers all of the relevant issues, such as pay rates, when overtime kicks in, union and non-union issues, equipment brought in by utilities providing assistance, the number of people on the crew and the number of supervisors.

When the June 2008 flood and accompanying rain storms took their t0ll on Linn and Johnson county utilities, Colberg said mutual aid arrived from beyond Iowa's borders.

"The Iowa Association of Electric Cooperatives has mutual aid agreements with other state associations," Colberg said. "In Linn County, we ended up with six linemen from Missouri helping us restore equipment and service.

"They threw all their stuff in a truck, and we found a place for them to stay. The agreements are pretty standard in terms of billing for lineman pay and the use of equipment, which makes it pretty easy to get everyone on the same page."

RECs own trucks and other equipment needed to maintain their infrastructure, but special equipment requests are not uncommon in the aftermath of a storm, according to John Dvorak, director of safety and loss control for the Iowa Association of Electric Cooperatives in Des Moines.

"Sometimes we get requests for track equipment to operate in heavy snow or very wet conditions," Dvorak said. "Occasionally a cooperative needs a smaller utility pole setting device to get into someone's backyard, rather than having to bring in a large twin-screw truck.

"All of our cooperatives have plans to continually update their equipment, but Mother Nature can be a pretty strong force to deal with. That's where the mutual aid agreements can really make a difference when a particular piece of equipment is needed."

Just as investor-owned utilities such as Alliant Energy/Interstate Light and Power in Cedar Rapids are becoming more aggressive in planning a response before a storm hits, rural electric cooperatives also are taking steps to get ahead of Mother Nature.

"We have people on standby and we have contractors ready to go to work," Dvorak said. "Everyone is trying to determine how far ahead can you forecast a storm and the manpower that will be needed to restore service."

Dvorak said one of the tools RECs are using is the Sperry-Piltz Ice Accumulation Index, developed in 2007 by Sidney Sperry of the Oklahoma Association of Electric Cooperatives, and Steven Piltz, meteorologist-in-charge at the National Weather Service office in Tulsa, Okla.

The SPIA Index is a forward-looking, ice-accumulation and ice-damage prediction index that uses an algorithm of researched parameters that, when combined with National Weather Service forecast data, predicts the projected footprint, total ice accumulation and resulting potential damage from approaching ice storms.

A SPIA Index rating of one indicates a storm isolated or localized utility interruptions are possible, typically lasting only a few hours.

At the other end of the index, a rating of five would indicate catastrophic damage to entire exposed utility systems, including both distribution and transmission networks.

Outages could last several weeks in some areas.

"We monitor the SPIA Index, and when we see the potential for significant ice in an area of the state we send out an email to cooperatives to warn them that they should prepare for icing and potential outages," Dvorak said.

"We feel it's important for us to keep them educated about potential problems that could affect their system."