City Electric Department recognized for reliability

Graham Thomas/Herald-Leader The Siloam Springs Electric Department was the recipient of an Outstanding Achievement award from the Municipal Electric Systems of Oklahoma (MESO) in the association’s annual Electric Operations and Reliability Competition. Pictured are employees of the Siloam Springs Electric Department, listed alphabetically by first name, Art Farine, Barry Yocham, Chris Jarrett, Chris Newberry, Chuck Moore, Clayton Harp, David Fletcher, David Samuel, Derek Ferguson, Foy Palmer, Frank Sislo, Glenn Severn, Joe Ellenbecker, John Bland, Jud Earp, Kyle Covell, Lonnie LeRoy, Lori Billups, Luke Hill, Randy Wells, Rick Gebhart, Ryan Schraub, Tim Connolly, Tommy Vaught and Wes Philpott. Also pictured are City Board Director and Vice Mayor Bob Coleman, MESO General Manager Tom Rider and City Administrator Phillip Patterson.
Graham Thomas/Herald-Leader The Siloam Springs Electric Department was the recipient of an Outstanding Achievement award from the Municipal Electric Systems of Oklahoma (MESO) in the association’s annual Electric Operations and Reliability Competition. Pictured are employees of the Siloam Springs Electric Department, listed alphabetically by first name, Art Farine, Barry Yocham, Chris Jarrett, Chris Newberry, Chuck Moore, Clayton Harp, David Fletcher, David Samuel, Derek Ferguson, Foy Palmer, Frank Sislo, Glenn Severn, Joe Ellenbecker, John Bland, Jud Earp, Kyle Covell, Lonnie LeRoy, Lori Billups, Luke Hill, Randy Wells, Rick Gebhart, Ryan Schraub, Tim Connolly, Tommy Vaught and Wes Philpott. Also pictured are City Board Director and Vice Mayor Bob Coleman, MESO General Manager Tom Rider and City Administrator Phillip Patterson.

The Siloam Springs Electric Department was recognized Wednesday as being one of the very best.

Municipal Electric Systems of Oklahoma recognized the Electric Department for Outstanding Achievement in the association's annual Electric Operations and Reliability Competition.

Siloam Springs, competing in the category of cities with a population of more than 10,000, was cited for achieving one of the highest reported levels of service reliability.

Siloam Springs had an Average System Availability Index of 99.9932 percent in 2014. According to MESO General Manager Tom Rider, that score ranked No. 2 out of 75 participants in the four-state area of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas.

"That's a very, very high-reliability index for 2014," Rider said.

Siloam Springs City Board Director and Vice Mayor Bob Coleman -- who accepted the award on behalf of Mayor John Turner -- pointed out that the reliability index data shows that of the Electric Department's 8,760 hours of operation in 2014 it was only out for around 36 minutes total.

"That's pretty unbelievable," Coleman said.

Electric Department director Art Farine said the city expects and strives to earn these types of awards.

"There's a lot of things we do to keep our numbers up," Farine said. "We send bucket trucks home with the guys so that they can respond directly to the outage or trouble problem. All our employees have to live within 10 miles of the city to reduce the response time. The standards that we built on line construction are very important to us. Safety is the biggest factor. Our guys live just down the road. They're neighbors to the folks that are out. That makes them care more about taking care of their community, and they work hard for it. We're really proud of their professionalism and how they take care of the system and their customers."

The Electric Department also identified, responded to and corrected power outages in less than one hour on average.

"Siloam Springs Electric not only has taken many steps to maintain reliability but continues to invest in system improvement," Rider said. "The current operational and employee training standards of this utility are superior. This training and development of staff and increased funding for reliability resulted in the continued excellent performance of the utility. Local control means local crews. That means fast response. And fast response means less outage time."

Rider said only six members met the basic standard of 99.99 percent. Altus, Okla., was ranked No. 1 at 99.9982 percent.

Sports on 05/20/2015