In a recent interview with APPA, Jill Weiss, Utilities Director of Wisconsin public power utility Stoughton Utilities, said safety is core to the culture of the utility and also discussed how the utility has maintained high levels of reliability.
With respect to safety, “We spare no expense when it comes to tools, training, PPE for our staff and I'm always a big believer in training for any different aha moments that come,” she said in a recent episode of APPA’s Public Power Now podcast.
Stoughton Utilities was recently recognized by APPA for its high levels of reliability and safety.
With respect to reliability, Weiss highlighted the “many, many years of great planning for the utility.”
Stoughton Utilities has “four substations, 20 circuits, which affords great reliability for us, but it's also...more than anything, I think it's the commitment of our staff,” she said.
“They're passionate about what they do. They're passionate about what they serve, the customers that they serve and they're passionate about our community. So whenever there's an outage or there's anything happening, they're very quick to respond, but also we do a lot of maintenance to make sure that we don't have those outages.”
Grid Project
In the interview, Weiss also provided details on a utility project – the Lake Loop project.
Noting the 20 circuits, she said that one is a radial feed “and we've got a major highway that goes through Stoughton, U.S. 51, and if the right pole gets hit, those customers theoretically could be out for a long period of time, so for many years we've recognized that this is an opportunity for us.”
But there is “no easy way just with terrain and wetlands and a variety of different things for us to loop that circuit so that we can back feed it. We've now found a route and we've got a multi-year project going on to actually create additional reliability for that circuit -- reliability for our utility as a whole and to do some load balancing with that work that we're doing.”
This project is scheduled to be completed in 2028.
Weiss noted that the utility is communicating with customers and the community about the project.
“When we're going through that area, we talk with the customers that are going to see us doing that work. We actually right now are undertaking a lot of maintenance in all of the utilities that we oversee,” she said.
“And so we've been communicating regularly with “our customers regarding our five year prediction as far as rate increases and what they're to expect related to rates, but also then share with them the projects that we're doing and the reliability that they'll gain from that work that's being done.”
Voluntary Program for Customers Helps Support Local Organizations
Meanwhile, Weiss also discussed a voluntary program that utility customers can opt to enroll in -- the RoundUP program -- which allows them to help support local community service organizations.
Under this program, customers can round up to the next highest dollar amount on their bill in order to make a contribution.
The program started in June 2007. “We bill for the utilities we oversee, which is electric, water and wastewater. We also bill for the city’s stormwater utility and with this our customers have the opportunity if they choose to, they can opt in and they can round up to the next whole dollar with each of their monthly bills,” Weiss noted.
“Twice a year, our utilities committee meets and reviews applications that are submitted from different community organizations, and then they look at those funding opportunities and evaluate” them and then “provide those dollars back to those community organizations.”
Throughout that time, there have been approximately 20 different organizations that have been supported by those dollars.
“Some of them include the Affordable Transportation Program, which helps people in need with short transportation, the Dane County Humane Society, [the] Dementia friendly Stoughton organization and one of our community organizations called START, which is the SToughton Area Resource Team and that helps community members in crisis by maximizing available resources to prevent homelessness. They also help with utility bills, housing, a variety of different things for those people in need.”
