Paul Ciampoli
Welcome to the latest episode of Public Power Now.
I'm Paul Ciampoli, APPA’s News Director.
Our guest on this episode is Dennis McFee, CEO and General Manager at Public Service Commission of Yazoo City, Mississippi.
Dennis, thanks for joining us as a guest on the podcast.
Dennis McFee
I appreciate you having me.
Paul Ciampoli
Dennis, just to get our conversation started, I wanted to give you the opportunity to detail your role and responsibilities at the utility and I also wanted to give you the opportunity to provide an overview of Public Service Commission of Yazoo City.
Dennis McFee
My role is to provide visionary leadership that aligns with the organization’s missions and values.
I'm responsible for overseeing the overall operations, functions, financial health and leading the employees that provide reliable utility service to the customers of Yazoo City, Mississippi.
The Public Service Commission is a multi service utility. We provide three services here -- electric, water and sewer. The utility has been in service for over 120 years -- definitely a long time and we have approximately 5,500 customers with a little bit over 40 employees.
Paul Ciampoli
I wanted to spend a fair amount of our discussion focused on something called the Power Project, which as you know, was launched by the utility in July 2024, a comprehensive multi-year initiative designed to significantly enhance power reliability and resiliency for customers in Yazoo City.
Can you provide additional details on the key components of this project?
Dennis McFee
It included several key components such as proactive vegetation management, which really helped us reduce outages caused by overgrown trees, pole replacements to strengthen the grid, some much needed service upgrades to modernize infrastructure.
It also involved installing sectionalising equipment to....keep some of those major outages down.
We invested in things like smart meters, some grid automation and some real time monitoring.
The biggest part of this project is the construction of a new substation. We are primarily fed from one end of town, so if we have an outage on the transmission side, it causes pretty much everyone to be out. So in order to provide some redundancy and some additional capacity, we're looking to build a substation on the northern end of town.
Paul Ciampoli
OK. And just for clarity’s sake, with respect to timing, so overall is there a timeline for everything to be completed as part of this project?
Dennis McFee
When we put this thing together, it was initially supposed to be a five-year project. Since its launch last year, we've definitely encountered some unexpected challenges, including supply chain delays, the fluctuating cost of equipment, staffing, weather related disruptions -- all these things played a role into the timeline of this project.
But what we found out was the work that we've done already, we're already seeing some significant impact, so I'd say we're still on course for that five-year mark and pretty much we’ll finish before then.
Paul Ciampoli
And how has the utility communicated with customers with respect to how the customers will benefit from the project?
Dennis McFee
We’ve used multiple means of communication. We've done billboards, press releases, workshops, community partnering and the biggest thing is probably our heavy use of our newly launched social media platforms.
But I think the biggest form of communication -- it's been the customer seeing the results in action. Reduced outages, shorter interruptions and faster response time and there is no better communication than them actually feeling it and seeing it.
Paul Ciampoli
Actually, a question occurred to me.
You mentioned supply chain challenges -- obviously, unfortunately something that's still a challenge for the overall utility sector.
Just out of curiosity, was that specifically related to the substation project or other elements as well?
Dennis McFee
Other elements as well, but primarily the substation.
I think the timeline for getting a new substation transformer is two years out.
So that's even before any shovel has hit the ground, any site work, and we're still two years out on getting the transformer delivered, so that's definitely one of the challenges.
The good news [is] the supply chain is getting better, but it's still not where we want it to be. But you know, we press on and we make do.
Paul Ciampoli
And the last question I had for you is I wanted to give you the opportunity, Dennis, to talk about -- other than the power project -- are there any other ongoing or planned initiatives at the utility you'd like to highlight?
Dennis McFee
In tandem with the power project...we wanted to have our presence felt and known other than just being a utility provider.
So we've started quarterly community service projects that allow the employees to give back to our community in different ways.
In addition, we've launched an employee support program where employees can make voluntary contributions to assist customers with their bills in special circumstances.
And of course, we've really beefed up communications, which has helped us out a lot and needless to say, there's a lot going on here and I think we're all loving it.
Paul Ciampoli
A quick follow up. With respect to the quarterly community services projects, any examples you could provide on that?
Dennis McFee
One thing we've done is a community clean up.
We cleaned up a a heavily trafficked road, which was just filled with litter. We collected probably about 20 bags of trash off of one road, one street. It was big for us because not only that we feel like we made a difference, but you could visibly see it.
We were constantly getting stopped by customers, members of the community just thanking us and appreciating the work that we're doing.
And it kind of changed the atmosphere here. People started to buy into more to the mission and the values and what we're trying to do as a utility.
Paul Ciampoli
So that’s another great example of the power of public power in the community.
Dennis McFee
Absolutely.
Paul Ciampoli
Dennis, thanks again for taking the time to speak with us.
I'd like to to see if you might be open to return as a guest at some point in the future.
Obviously, we could talk again about the power project and I would imagine between now and when we speak again, we’d have other things we could discuss as well.
Dennis McFee
And I love to do it.
Paul Ciampoli
Sure thing, Dennis. Well, thanks again.
Dennis McFee
Thank you.
Paul Ciampoli
Thanks for listening to this episode of Public Power Now, which is produced by Julio Guerrero, Graphic and Digital Designer at APPA.
I'm Paul Ciampoli and we'll be back next week with more from the world of public power.
