Dave Luttrell, general manager of Lincoln County Power District #1 (LCPD), reports LCPD has been designated among the top two percent of rural district utilities in the country by the National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corporation (CFC).
“This was based,” Luttrell said, “on the power district’s overall electric rates.”
CFC is a member-owned non-profit organization that finances rural utilities around the nation. As part of its analysis, it tracks the nationwide rural electric industry and issues a report listing key performance indicators for utilities.
According to Luttrell, this year’s report, which came out at the end of June, “using data from 2018, ranked Lincoln County as having some of the lowest rates for electric service in the entire U.S.”
Out of 814 utilities around the country, only 11 were found to have lower rates for service than LCPD.
“Despite low rates being one of the hallmarks of what we do,” Luttrell said, “we also perform exceedingly well according to the CFC report in the maintenance of our system.”
The report pointed out in 2018 there were only 20 other utilities in the entire country that had fewer hours of overtime restoring service to customers from power outages than LCPD. “And,” Luttrell said, “our service responsibility is getting better and better each year. We were able to service our customers 99.96 percent of the time.”
Luttrell pointed out that all of this is by design, “not by accident, to improve system reliability and the need for less overtime hours.”
LCPD is continuing the work of rehabilitating some of the oldest sections of the system, in service since 1936.
Luttrell cited the ongoing projects to replace the main distribution line that runs through Meadow Valley from Caselton to Caliente as one example of many projects that LCPD has pursued over the past few years that are helping to improve reliability and lower operating costs.
