A day in the life of our line crew

Our crews work hard every day to ensure our members receive reliable electricity to power their lives. While we tend to think about lineworkers when a storm rolls through, we often take for granted their work to keep our electric grid running smoothly. Let’s take a closer look at what could be on our crews’ schedule on a blue-sky day.

New service

We all know this is a great place to live, so it’s no surprise that people want to move to our area! When new homes and businesses are built in our communities, our lineworkers and engineers work together to bring power to these new buildings. The construction plans often include digging trenches for underground wire or installing new poles and stringing line from the road to a new house in the country. Regardless of where you live in our service area, if you want power, we’ll bring it to you!

Unplanned outages

While most outages are caused by bad weather, there are a couple other common causes that can result in outages on a sunny day. Animals such as squirrels, birds and snakes often cause outages when they chew on the lines or crawl into equipment. Vehicles and large construction or farming equipment occasionally hit poles or pull down overhead power lines. No matter the time of day or the cause, our crews will restore power to our members.

Grid maintenance

Weather, animals and time can take its toll on an electric grid. Just like how homes deteriorate over time and require upgrades, our electric grid requires constant maintenance to make sure you always have access to reliable power. Piedmont Electric conducts regular inspections of all our equipment, poles, lines and substations to ensure all aging equipment is efficient and reliable. You can often find our crews replacing old poles, updating transformers and performing maintenance on substations.
Piedmont Electric also conducts regular right-of-way maintenance that is vital to keeping the power on. We trim trees and maintain a clear right-of-way around more than 3,600 miles of lines every three years to help keep tree branches from falling on the lines. Our proactive maintenance helps prevent outages and blinks, strengthens our grid and will keep it running smoothly long into the future.

Nighttime outages

We value our members and one of the ways we show we care is through our outage response. If you lose power at 2 a.m., our lineworkers don’t wait until after their morning coffee to restore your power. Once they receive the call, they put on their boots and safety equipment and get to work. Piedmont Electric always has crews on call ready to respond to an outage, large or small. Because even if only one member is without power, you matter to us. Not many organizations can deliver that level of service!