6.1d ERMUSR 08-13-2019Elk River --
Municipal Utilities UTILITIES COMMISSION MEETING
TO:
ERMU Commission
MEETING DATE:
August 13, 2019
SUBJECT:
Staff Update
ACTION REQUESTED:
None
FROM:
Mike Tietz —Technical Services Superintendent
AGENDA ITEM NUMBER:
6.1d
DISCUSSION:
• In July, the locating department had a total of 546 locate tickets consisting of seven
emergency tickets, 7 cancellations, 463 normal tickets and updated tickets. This is a 5%
increase in volume of tickets from the previous month.
• Electrical Technicians continue with updating the power bill, substation checks,
disconnects/reconnects, dealing with customer meter and off-peak issues. Meters have
been ordered for the transfer of Areas 7 & 8.
• On July 18, staff ran Engines 1, 3 & 4 without any issues. Engine 2 was not run as it was
found that water had entered the fuel tank. The engine has been isolated and taken out
of service at this time. We are working on getting quotes to get it repaired.
• Weekly meter reads continue to go well. Staff continues to perform meter audits
around the system as time allows and has been discovering a number of instances of
vegetation blocking access to the meters. These customers will be notified about
correcting the issues
• Mapping department continues to update points and attributes for all of our systems
assets within the ESRI ArcView GIS system. We recently started experiencing licensing
issues due to an increased number of users in the GIS system. With the limitations of the
current licensing structure, we will need to upgrade our licensing agreement with ESRI.
To cover this unbudgeted expense, staff will be re -allocating approved budget funds
from other Technical Services Capital Projects to pay for the upgrade to our licensing
agreement; the projects being deferred are the AMI Pilot testing, and Fiber Extension
Buildout projects. Power System Engineering (PSE) will be assisting with the ESRI
upgrade.
Page 1 of 2
116
• On July 23, Connexus Energy utilized their recloser on Highway 10 to backfeed their
Daytonport substation. Minnesota Municipal Power Agency (MMPA) adjusted our July
power bill to account for this usage.
Page 2 of 2
117