(Orleans)—Interstate Power and Light Company, a subsidiary of Alliant Energy, is embarking on a project to upgrade components of its distribution system in a portion of Dickinson county. Alliant Energy spokesman Justin Foss tells KUOO news crews are replacing about 100 power poles in an area from the east side of Big Spirit Lake to Superior and along some select roads…(click here for comment.) “Since February our crews have been replacing about 100 different power poles in the communities. And for the poles they’re not replacing they’re testing all the others to make sure that they’ll last and stay up for a long time. We call this a life extension program. And by going out and replacing select equipment on these poles our crews are able to prolong the life of the circuit by up to 20 years. Some people ask why don’t you just replace the whole thing or why don’t you just replace the whole thing right away and what we found is that by replacing select equipment we’re able to lower the cost of doing the maintenance on it but yet improve the reliability on it. So we’re trying to find that balance between just replacing the entire circuit which is rather expensive, to going out and select and doing key improvements.”
Even then, Foss says the project still represents a major investment in the utility company’s infrastructure…(click here for comment.) “One of the things we wanted to do is to let people know what we’re doing. You know the utility industry is the second most capital intensive industry in the world. In this project alone just for this area it represents about $270,000 of investment and what we want to do is let people understand the investments that we’re putting into the community so they have a better appreciation of what it takes to serve electricity and natural gas.”
Foss adds some Alliant Energy customers may experience a brief outage because of the work. He says they’ll attempt to contact affected customers prior to any outages.
