Transformers and cable are our most expensive items. We have a buying group where all the cooperatives can place orders. With large orders come discounts, and we also share shipping costs.

Meter reading and collections are time consuming and expensive, we now read these meters through the computers. The ability to monitor equipment with computers allows us to correct potential problems. With our AMR (Automated Meter Reading) we can sometimes detect power outages and correct them before the customer knows the power was out, saving overtime hours. We still need you to call in if your power does go out, however.

One of our biggest challenges we have today is the replacement of lines. Some of our lines are over thirty years old and are not capable of the loads we have today. North Itasca Electric crews are replacing a three phase line from our Jessie Lake Substation on County Road 32 to County Road 4 to Talmoon. New poles and larger conductors will insure adequate electric service for Spring Lake, Wirt, Talmoon, and to the west side of Big Turtle Lake.

Future plans include installing three phase service from North Star Lake to Smith Lake. This will better serve a area that sees a lot of outages and also act as a back-feed for the Scenic area. We also have plans to replace the line from County Road 340, to Brush Shanty Lake to Antler Lake to County Road 45.

Over the past year the line department saw a slowdown in new services, in a normal year 90 to 120 new services are added to our system, this past year there were only 76 new services! However, the crews did rebuild a record number of existing services to accommodate electric heating loads.

I want to thank our member-owners for their patience and understanding when we have power outages. Please know our linemen work hard and are good at what they do.

Hope to see you at the annual meeting.