David Latona: Welcome to Co-op Conversations with DEMCO, where we dive into the topics that impact your power,
your co-op, and your community. I'm David Latona, your host.
Here in Louisiana, hurricane season is a part of life.
It runs from June through November.
But for DEMCO, storm preparation doesn't just happen a few months out of the year.
It's something we focus on year round.
Today we're talking about how DEMCO prepares for storms, how we respond when outages and system damage happens.
Joining me today is an expert in that field, Mr.
Mark Phillips, DEMCO's chief engineering and operations officer.
Mark, welcome so much. It is great to have you.
Mark Phillips: Yeah, super excited, David.
David Latona: To give our listeners a sense of complexity and scale of what goes into keeping the lights on,
would you give us an overview of DEMCO's system?
What does it entail?
Mark Phillips: Yeah, sure. So we traverse seven different parishes here in South Louisiana.
In those seven parishes, we have about 44 substations strategically placed across 230 miles of transmission,
about 9,200 miles of distribution lines, servicing 118,000 + meters.
Wow. Probably impact if you do the math, four members per household,
you're half a million people that we actually provide power to.
David Latona: That's a great point. Not only that, the commercial and industrial accounts that employ people,
but then also provide services that are important to our members as well.
So, Mark, one thing we're often asked before each storm, and definitely before hurricane season,
is what are you, DEMCO, doing to prepare?
Mark Phillips: First and foremost, we have an emergency response plan that we review yearly by all of our staff.
We take into consideration, you know, all the employees that we have here at DEMCO,
and we make sure that they all have assignments and tasks assigned to them in the event that we need a certain level of
response. From there, it's reviewed by our board of directors.
They give kind of give us a sign of seal of approval for that as well.
And then we file it at the Public Service Commission, kind of letting them know that, hey, we're ready. You know, we're
ready for anything. You said hurricane, but it covers more than that.
Ice storms, unfortunately here in south Louisiana, snow, tornadoes,
extreme weather. We don't get the traditional afternoon thunderstorm anymore.
David Latona: So we've got to be ready for anything at any time.
Mark Phillips: The afternoon beatdown is what we're getting now as the weather is extreme.
David Latona: Yeah. So I think about my young life when I worked in a restaurant,
in the kitchen, when my first job was, "Hey, you're going to cut onions and tomatoes." And I said,
"This is not exciting at all." I didn't see any of this on Hell's Kitchen anywhere,
so it wasn't fun. But then when my first lunch rush happened, and those tomatoes and onions were ready to go
into the recipe that they were using.
Now I see why that preparation was made at 7 a.m.
instead of at 11:00, when everybody was showing up and wanting their table and their fajitas and nachos.
We make preparations all year long.
Can you share with us about that?
Mark Phillips: We want to be prepared at all times for anything, right?
Only when the storm is really extreme do we have to actually use some outside help or some outside resources to assist us.
But we have an emergency response plan, like I mentioned, that we have in place that gives our employees
a guidebook, like a playbook on how we're going to attack certain levels of certain storms.
From their inventory, inventory is huge.
We have a lot of inventory on our shelf in stock.
We have storm inventory as well that we keep off system.
You can get it at any point in time, and we have great relationships with our vendors that keep storm
and inventory stock on their shelves as well.
So inventory plays a huge part because I can find the damage and assess the damage and see the damage,
but if I don't have the material to rebuild the damage, well, that can be a problem as well.
So that's a big part of being prepared is having the inventory you need to at least get you through the first week or two of the
impacts of a storm. Crews, equipment.
When you talk about crews, you know, we have our own crews, DEMCO crews.
There's about 100 linemen that service our seven parish territory through six district offices.
There are times when you need extra assistance, and that's where mutual aid assistance comes into play.
And that's kind of like contracts we have with other co-ops.
I guess that's probably the best way to put it.
To where if I need some assistance, I can request help from another co-op,
and they'll send the resources. Even though DEMCO and Louisiana may be impacted and Mississippi and Alabama may be impacted,
we can still get help from Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Missouri,
Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma. I mean, these are all folks that have come and helped us restore power.
And then we have our contract crews that are on system helping us.
Today, they're a vital part in doing what we do every day with reliability and resiliency and hardening of our lines and our
equipment replacing aging infrastructure.
We have agreements with them as well that if we need extra assistance,
they're already on system. We can bring extra assistance from those contract crews as well.
So you think about all of that. There's a lot of preparation that goes in to making sure that all of those resources are ready,
ready to go in an attempt to respond.
David Latona: I know you mentioned that 9,000 miles of line.
It's hard to even wrap my brain around that.
But how do you stay ahead of inspections?
I mean, you've got to know that's a dangerous product that's up in the air or under the ground,
sensitive material that's delivering that power.
So tell me about the upgrades necessary, and how do you know that they're in need of an upgrade?
Mark Phillips: Yeah. So on a day to day basis, as a lineman, you're trained to look at the power lines as you're
driving down the road, and I know that was the task that was placed on me when I first got hired as a lineman was to
look for hazards, identify hazards associated with the lines to prevent outages,
or to protect the public, or us even as linemen working.
I mean, there's so many dangers out there the unseen, the unknown.
You can't see electricity flowing.
It's just flowing. Right, the electrons are just passing through that interstate grid,
9000 miles, and they're traversing back and forth.
So we take it very serious. We have scheduled line patrols that we do every year.
Every feeder, every inch, every mile, trying to identify hazards associated with the power,
but also to prevent outages that, unnecessary outages.
And then from there, we'll take the results of those findings, and then we'll put a plan together.
Some response is needed faster than others.
Like something that is very, you know, could be considered dangerous. We immediately attack on the side
of that, you know, something that may can be delayed or planned or organized.
In our day to day efforts, we'll push it a little bit downstream,
but we inspect our lines, our equipment on a regular basis along with the right-of-way as well.
That's probably the most important because it causes so much, so many issues for us.
David Latona: So many miles of line. And I know that our districts are positioned throughout our service territory,
so they become a part of that community.
And they know that line, and they know that circuit coming out of that substation.
And they can understand that is an area of concern, and we can address that as soon as possible.
So I'm sure that's helpful to have those crews that are a part of the community throughout our service territory.
I know that we were founded in 1938, but being a rural electric cooperative,
I know that there's some of the areas we serve are suburban and urban,
but there's still a lot of rural in DEMCO service territory.
So can you share a little bit about that vast system, and how that plays a part in your
team's preparation?
Mark Phillips: You need to know the areas that you're working in. And like you said,
we position our districts across our service territories to respond and to maintain our grid,
right? Each district is assigned to a geographic region, substations,
feeders associated with that. And a lot of our guys, our linemen,
they live on these lines. So they're maintaining, they're looking,
they're trying to figure out exactly, you know, what they need to do to protect the integrity of the
power as it flows into those communities.
When you talk about the geography and the terrain, we're in Tunica,
which is almost to Mississippi, the driest, probably portion of our territory.
And we're in Lower Livingston and Ascension, we're in the swamp,
so to say. And there's a whole lot that happens in between.
And then some of our areas, like you mentioned, are outside of the metropolitan area of Baton Rouge.
So we have a lot of urban area as well, and it presents its own challenges.
Some of those lines are underground.
Some of the lines in the rural areas that are that are overhead.
You kind of have to have a little bit of expertise, and it changes from district to district depending on what they
deal with on a regular basis.
David Latona: That's great. I'm glad you said the underground facilities there too.
I know that some questions we get from members and the community and our industry as a whole,
they receive this question of why don't you just bury the lines?
That seems simple. You just put it underground.
Seems easy right?
Mark Phillips: Seems very simple.
David Latona: How do we answer that to our members out there?
Mark Phillips: You know, there's a huge difference in the overhead, building overhead lines against building underground lines.
So the materials for one and the labor associated, that is very expensive.
We have to bury our primary line six foot deep.
That's a six foot trench. You have to dig our bore, which even gets to be more expensive where you try not to disturb
the ground, but you're going under roads and going under sidewalks and driveways.
So to convert that overhead to underground.
It's very, very expensive, and we're not for profit utility.
All of the expenses we incur go into the rate.
So to upgrade the lines in a sense.
I'm saying there are areas that we have done that too, because they are what we call a repeat offenders.
Maybe we can't obtain the right-of-ways we need to trim.
Maybe we can't widen the right-of-way to that extent.
So the next best thing is to put it underground. And we've done that.
But it is very, very costly. You have to be very strategic where you do that at because once again,
we're spending the members money. We want to put it where it most benefits the member.
David Latona: That's important too. That's something not everybody knows that even going over the rivers and interstates is a
complex issue when constructing line, right?
The permitting process, all that goes into this expense.
So boring under an interstate or a railroad, or all that contributes to that expense.
Can you share with our listeners a little more of what's happening during a storm?
So walk me through that. I know you have some personal stories too of getting those in –.
Mark Phillips: I have a bunch.
David Latona: (laughs) Getting yourself and those employees to their duty location and responding.
Mark Phillips: That's probably the most challenging part, right?
Is, you know, our employees are stretched out across those seven parishes that are impacted.
They may have to cut themselves out of their driveway to get their vehicle,
at least to the road to get to the office.
We've had employees, you know, you think about the 2016 flood.
I mean, the area, our headquarters office, is in here in Central was heavily impacted.
I think 92% of the residents in the city of Central took on water in their homes.
Well, how many of those folks are our employees?
A bunch of them. So we've got to get our employees here. We've got to get them here safely. That's really,
really, really important. It's probably the most important thing to DEMCO,
is making sure that our employees are taken care of. Because they can't respond to the event if they can't get here.
So, you know, that's the first check for us.
It's a check to make sure that our employees are okay, and they can make it in to their assignments,
whatever that may be. But that's super important is our employees.
David Latona: So you mentioned that we've got crews, in-house crews.
We've got in-house contract crews that are on our system daily.
But then you said we get assistance from elsewhere, whether that's even outside contractors,
electric cooperatives that come, and they're a part of that.
So how does DEMCO go from an employee pool the size that it is, and expand times five and times
seven to get coverage over that 9,000 miles of line?
Mark Phillips: Yeah. That's a great question. So, you know, we have to number one,
we have to give them a warm bed to lay in and a hot meal.
The most important part of that is housing.
When we bring extra resources in from the outside, whether it be contract or mutual aid,
depending on the size of the storm, we enact certain parts of our response plan,
right? We may use hotel rooms to some extent to try to house the assistance that's is coming in?
And then if we have to get even broader, we'll open up a couple of camps or summer camps for kids.
But they're summer camps for adults when the weather's coming through because we house them in those areas as well,
because we can put a lot of folks in one place.
And then at the most extreme of that is actually developing and creating somewhat of a tent city.
That's where we have these circus tents to give you a visual.
They may have a mess hall. They may have a laundry mat.
They may have a shower trailers, and you know, everything that they need to give them,
you know as much comfort as we can provide.
David Latona: Look, as I know I work at DEMCO, but as an employee, I'm super thankful that those guys and girls
would come from all over the country, even in those serious cases,
to help us out. So you're right, we want to treat them well.
We want them to come back the next time there's a storm.
We don't want another storm, but we want them to be interested in coming back.
So, Mark, thanks so much for walking us through that.
Everything that goes into DEMCO's year round storm readiness.
This is not something you think of the week before.
This is something that's on your mind as that storm manager or the emergency response manager throughout the year,
it's clear that the work you and your team do long before the storm plays a huge role in keeping our system prepared and also
our members safe. That's most important to us.
So we're not done yet. I know we have another episode.
We'll continue the conversation, cover what happens after the storm has passed and how DEMCO
restores power. That step by step process that I'm sure all of our listeners are interested in.
You want to know what's going on out there.
So thanks for tuning in to Co-op Conversations with DEMCO.
Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode.
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For Mark Phillips, I'm David Latona.
Let's keep the conversation going.