6.1g ERMU 12-12-2023Elk River
Municipal Utilities UTILITIES COMMISSION MEETING
TO:
FROM:
ERMU Commission
Mike Tietz —Technical Services Superintendent
MEETING DATE:
AGENDA ITEM NUMBER:
December 12, 2023
6.1g
SUBJECT:
Staff Update
ACTION REQUESTED:
None
DISCUSSION:
• In November, the locators processed 424 locate tickets. These consisted of 334 normal
tickets, 5 emergency tickets, 39 updated tickets, 31 cancellations, 5 meets, 1 non -
excavation, and 71 boundary surveys. This resulted in an 8.6% decrease in tickets from
the previous month and is a 102.9% increase from the prior November.
• Electrical technicians completed 216 service order tasks, updated the power bill,
addressed customer meter issues and any off-peak concerns.
• The Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) residential water meters and residential
electric meters continue to be installed in new services and where we may have had an
existing meter failure. We have narrowed down the AMI endpoint installation proposals
to two vendors. We have scheduled interviews with them for December 15 and hope to
make a decision that day. We are still anticipating a start date of March 2024 for mass
deployment of meters. Integration with NISC has been starting to come together this
month and we are looking forward to starting our meter data management system
implementation in December.
• For the month of November, staff did not run generators. Engine #4 is still waiting on
plugs that are on backorder.
• Connexus Energy utilized their feeders out of our Waco and North substations for a
short time due to a transmission issue caused by a vehicle hitting a guy wire on a
transmission structure near Baldwin Township. We also experienced an interruption,
but Great River Energy was able to perform some emergency switching and restore
power to our substations in about 3 minutes.
• 1 attended Minnesota Power Systems Conference in St. Paul during the week of
November 6 which I found very informational. There was a wide range of topics covered
from supply chain updates, to small modular reactor technology, to electric vehicle
penetration in distribution systems. Thank you to the Commission for allowing me to
continue to attend this annual conference.
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