The town of Clayton, North Carolina, emerged from a community that was founded in 1770 when the British-appointed Governor of the colonial province, William Tryon (later infamous for a failed plot to kidnap George Washington), cut a road through the territory on his way to confront a pre-American Revolution insurrection in nearby Hillsborough. The town grew rapidly after a local rail station was built in 1866, and was formally incorporated in 1869.
| Population | 31,732 |
| Electric customers | 9,500 |
| Utility formed | 1913 |
| Utility employees | 14 |
The electric department in Clayton was formed in 1913, when the city decided to manage its own electric supply, as it saw the major power providers at the time choosing instead to focus on developing in the larger areas nearby.
Clayton’s proximity to North Carolina’s research triangle — the cities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill — gives new residents the opportunity to settle in a more close-knit town at commuting distance from the nearby metro areas. The electric department takes its role as a steward of the town’s quality of life seriously, particularly in ensuring infrastructure and service quality keep pace with the town’s rapid growth.
“The thing I like about working here is we’re very customer-focused. Our bread and butter is service to the community, and our response times are a lot quicker because of this small community that we work in… When I came to work here [in 2001], most of the downtown still had a 4-kilovolt system — much of which was installed in the 1920s. Right now, we're continuing to upgrade the system, especially through replacing outdated transclosures and aging underground cable,” said Mack Keen, electric system superintendent.
Clayton was home to fewer than 7,000 residents at the turn of the 21st century, but boomed to around 16,000 by 2010. The town’s population currently stands at a little more than 31,000, and electric system director Matt Proctor believes the population could double again over the next 10 years.
“We're looking at growing our electric distribution system by installing overhead lines to newer areas of town, while also reconductoring existing lines to accommodate more load,” Proctor said.
This growth has caused a shift within the town’s public power utility, with the department looking to implement and leverage the technologies needed to continue providing quality service to a rapidly growing population.
“From a technology standpoint, we’re working through the transition of Clayton going from a small-town utility with a mindset of keeping the lights on, to taking that next step to be even more customer-focused through leveraging technology. For example, we’ve deployed an outage management system and a computerized maintenance management system that we are continually improving on and becoming more reliant for day-to-day operations,” Proctor said.
Despite these technical changes, the core ethos of the town’s public power utility remains unchanged. This has included a commitment to community engagement encompassing both education and charitable fundraising.
“We participate in a lot of touch-a-truck events and career days at schools. In the fall there’s a harvest festival where we set up a booth with equipment like a cutaway transformer to explain to how those work. During that event, we do a raffle for the Fallen Lineman Foundation to raise money for injured linemen,” Keen said.
For Clayton’s electric department, this focus on getting ahead of the demands of a growing population all ties back to a sense of personal commitment to upholding the town’s quality of life through exceptional service.
“We take a lot of pride in that, and I think that's not just Clayton, that's public power across the board,” Proctor said.
