Braham, Minn—Solid maintenance efforts and systematic upgrades to equipment helped keep power on for East Central Energy members in spite of the recent extended wave of extreme hot weather and increased electricity demand, says LeRoy Thurn, ECE vice president of operations and engineering. "The cooperative is in the process of completing a $57 million 4-year work plan that included system infrastructure improvements and addressed new service growth."

"While some utilities experienced outages due to overheated transformers, system overloads and the like," adds Gwen Thomas, ECE senior vice president, "the co-op had no significant outages due to heat and we were able to keep energy flowing to East Central Energy members."

The electric cooperative senior vice president points out that even during severe storms following the heat wave, ECE kept outages to fewer than 1,000 of the nearly 56,000 members it serves.

"Although strong winds took down some trees and lines resulting in scattered outages, we know that high quality equipment and clear rights-of-way reduce the incidence and impact from storms," she continues. "Without meticulous attention to construction and maintenance as well as detail-orientated right-of-way vegetation control, we expect many more ECE members would have suffered outages."

East Central Energy www.eastcentralenergy.com is a member-owned electric cooperative that serves nearly 56,000 homes, farms and businesses in east central Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin. ECE provides electricity, Internet and long distance services as well as community and business development and environmental services.