Leaders address electric issues

Research aims to understand cause of frequent outages, how to prevent them

Perry Township’s trustees and administrator are doing their homework to figure out what can be done reduce frequent power outages that have plagued their community.

In conjunction with that research, those government leaders are striving to get a better understanding of how The Illuminating Co. provides electricity to the community, and if components in their power grid need to be updated or replaced.

Township government officials began their exploration into these topics during a recent two-hour meeting with Wendy Zele, FirstEnergy Corp.’s manager of external affairs. The Illuminating Co. is a subsidiary of FirstEnergy.

“We got a lot of information from her, and I’d have to say it was very informative, said Perry Township Trustee Board Chairman Robert Dawson. “It’s going to help us going forward as we try to get involved in this topic of electric reliability on behalf of Perry Township.”

One key piece of advice that trustees received from Zele is that individual residents always should call The Illuminating Co. to report power outages at their homes.

Dawson said disruptions in electric service sometimes can affect homes in scattered locations — one person’s house might lose power, but their neighbor’s home doesn’t, for instance. So, it’s important to help The Illuminating Co. pinpoint all homes that have lost power by calling the utility at 888-544-4877 to provide details on the incident.

“Reporting is absolutely critical,” Dawson said.

Dawson also offered guidance for any residents who believe that they’ve had an appliance destroyed through abnormal voltage fluctuations caused when electricity unexpectedly goes off and on.

He said residents should note the time and date of when the appliance was destroyed and get an independent service technician’s opinion on the cause of incident.

If the resident believes The Illuminating Co. is to blame, they should contact township Administrator Karen Sundy at 440-2595140 about how to file a formal report.

During the meeting with Zele, township government leaders also discussed the reliability of The Illuminating Co.’s electric grid infrastructure in the Perry area. Dawson said he and his colleagues learned about some of the company’s upcoming improvements and maintenance plans in the community.

“There’s a number of very positive things going on with getting the infrastructure from those substations (serving the Perry area) to the actual homeowner, and a lot of it is taking place right now and I think it’s going to benefit us pretty soon, as some of it comes up,” he said.

Circuit and line inspections are scheduled to be completed by the end of the year to identify trouble spots, Sundy wrote in a separate announcement on Perry Township’s website.

The Illuminating Co. also has will trim trees in the vicinity of its lines and poles in the Perry area in the first quarter of 2022, Sundy wrote.

Dawson said he believes that the utility is “making good strides” with inspection and maintenance of its above-ground infrastructure. However, he said township government leaders also are concerned about underground electric cables that are fed to the community’s housing subdivisions and developments.

“Some of those (underground electric cables) in Perry Township are approaching 30 years and over,” he said. “And the problem with that is that there is no easy way to determine where the faults are in these wires that are (concealed underground).”

Dawson said township government leaders want to look further into Illuminating Co. records to ensure that worn-out underground electric cables in the township are replaced before they cause power outages.

“What we’ve done since our meeting (with Zele) is we’ve reached back out in writing to The Illuminating Co., and asked them for the drawings and/or the mappings for the developments in Perry Township that are serviced by underground cabling,” Dawson said.

Dawson, fellow Trustees Rick Amos and Nancy Steele, and Sundy also have requested that The Illuminating Co. provide them with a list of power outages, by address, that have occurred in the township over the past three years.

“That way, we can see how close certain areas are in our township to being on the list of (having underground cable) replaced instead of just fixed,” he said.

Dawson said township government leaders want to confirm if The Illuminating Co. is complying with its own protocols regarding how many times a section of underground cable is repaired before it is replaced with a new wire.

“If we have areas that we see are getting close (to being ready for a new underground cable), maybe rather than waiting for more stuff to happen, we can encourage (The Illuminating Co.) be proactive and go in before (another power outage occurs),” he said.