Public Works Commission scores well in keeping the lights on

Electricity customers of the Fayetteville Public Works Commission experience less time without power than those of most other electric utility companies, according to data presented at the PWC’s board meeting on Wednesday.

“Our system was available to our customers 99.992% of 2023,” said Jon Rynne, the PWC’s chief operating officer for electrical systems. 

PWC customers in 2023 had on average 64.86 minutes without power, Rynne said. That compares to an industry median in 2022 of 105.13 minutes, he said. These figures did not include outages caused by major events, such as hurricanes. Industry-wide data for 2023 is not yet available, Rynne said.

When major events are included in the outage statistics, the PWC’s rate was 86.68 minutes in 2023, according to Rynne’s presentation; the industry median in 2022 was 176.36 minutes.

The PWC had 721 PWC power outages in 2023, Rynne’s presentation says. Power failures were caused by factors including:

• Equipment damage, 319 outages, or 44%. This can be due to age or wear-and-tear, Rynne said, and sometimes it appears to be damage from hit-and-run drivers.
• Wildlife, 218, or 30%. “Squirrels are a very large contributor to our outages. On an overhead system, squirrels really can cause you a lot of havoc,” Rynne said. Birds and snakes also cause problems, he said.
• Vegetation (such as trees), 60, or 8%.
• Vehicle accidents, 49, or 7%. 
• Weather, 33, or 5%.
• Lightning, 14, or 2%.
• Other causes, 28, or 4%.

Would underground power lines help?

Underground utility lines are protected from most storm damage, Rynne said, but they have their own, expensive problems.

“Although you may not see outages when you first put in an underground system, as that system ages, if you do not keep up with its replacement, it causes outages,” he said. “And the durations of those outages are quite a bit longer, because it’s quite a bit harder to repair the underground system than an overhead system.

“It takes a lot of time to find where the faults are, isolate them, and the repairs are much more expensive,” Rynne said.

An overhead repair may cost a few thousand dollars, he said, including a replacement pole and labor.

The rule of thumb used to be that a similar repair for an underground line would cost seven to 10 times more than an overhead line repair, Rynne said. But since Covid-19 and supply-chain issues drove up the cost of equipment, he thinks it's even more now.

“For underground, it typically involves either replacing the entire span of cable, or digging it up and splicing it, which is very labor-intensive,” he said. “And the equipment is just plain more expensive.”

Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at 910-261-4710 and pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.

This story was made possible by contributions to CityView News Fund, a 501c3 charitable organization committed to an informed democracy.