NEPPA eNewsletter
June 2011
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Meet Mark Barakian, general manager of the Boylston Municipal Light Department. He recently replaced former manager Gary Harrington who retired in January. Barakian is no stranger to the small Worcester County utility that serves a little more than 2,000 meters and has six employees. He has been there for 21 years, serving as general foreman for the last 10. His first year in the utility industry was right out of high school when he worked a year for the West Boylston Municipal Light Plant in West Boylston which is right down the road from Boylston. He left to start his own construction company but realized it wasn’t for him and took a lineworker apprentice position with Boylston. He attended NEPPA training and worked his way up to journeyman before becoming foreman. He says the hardest part of his new position is being in the office. "I worked over 20 years outside with the line crew and I loved it. It’s a bit of an adjustment." What he says he loves about his new job is having a capable, experienced staff he can rely on. Taking his place as general foreman is Mike Lucia, a 20-year employee of Boylston. "We worked together for years. I know he does his job and I don’t have to worry." His office staff are both long-timers and according to Barakian, they know their jobs really well and provide excellent service to their customers. "There is a small town feel to Boylston Light. All of the employees grew up and live in town or neighboring towns." Boylston is a full-service member of the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company and is involved with the Berkshire Wind Project. It jointly owns a substation with neighboring West Boylston and both utilities are in the process of replacing switch gear and upgrading the transformer. Employees of Boylston attend NEPPA safety meetings and technical training as well as customer service conferences and workshops. "I look forward to continuing working with NEPPA and all the new managers in the area," Barakian said. ##SHARELINKS##
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On June 15 and 16 in Pascoag, Rhode Island, the annual NEPPA Apprentice Lineworker Skills Assessment Rodeo will take place, bringing together more than 60 lineworker apprentices to show us what they have learned about the hard work of climbing poles, changing out transformers and rescuing fellow lineworkers who may be injured while high in the air. This event is an important part of the Apprentice Lineworker school, since it provides an opportunity to demonstrate the physical skills of overhead linework while being judged on preparation, execution and safe working procedures. For those of us who have never climbed a utility pole and changed a cross arm, it is impressive indeed to see these skills in play and the teamwork that is required to perform so many of these tasks. While it is serious business, the rodeo is also a great outing for participants and spectators alike: a day in the warm June sunshine (with the weatherman’s cooperation) with some background music, grilled burgers and quality time with good people. The Pascoag Utility District staff, once again, makes this whole event possible, contributing their time, equipment, cooking skills and good humor to all who show up. Steve Socoby, apprentice lineworker trainer, will run the skills competition and can always use a few extra hands to help out. So, do yourself a favor, whether or not you have apprentices in the program. Take a day away from the office and come on down. The students will appreciate it, and you will enjoy seeing the next generation of public power lineworkers in action. It’s also a great way to show your support for public power. Any questions about the rodeo or the location can be answered by Sharon Davies at the NEPPA office (508-482-5906 or sdavies@neppa.org). We look forward to seeing you in Pascoag. ##SHARELINKS##
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The Pascoag Utility District, together with its energy advisor Energy New England, has successfully executed its 2012-2014 power supply strategy as approved by the Board of Utility Commissioners. The strategy included a beneficial sourcing of the Standard Offer Service component of its rates for the years 2012 through 2014. The deal is "load following" in nature, which requires Constellation Energy, through a subsidiary, to provide PUD’s power needs which are not already supplied through its long-term contracts. Constellation will fill 100 percent of the utility’s power "gap" in 2012, 80 percent in 2013 and 75 percent in 2014. The declining percentages will allow PUD to entertain other offers it wishes to consider during those years, such as a potential Burrillville micro-hydro project, other renewable energy offers or other potential long-term power projects. Because of the low cost in natural gas markets at the present time, and because the power market in New England correlates very closely with natural gas prices, PUD was able to secure the deal for all three years at a competitive rate. PUD projects that this transaction will save more than $500,000 on an annual basis compared to 2011 and will minimize non-efficient sales that are sometimes made back to the power grid operator ISO-New England. The program will help to keep the Standard Offer power supply portion of the PUD rate structure very competitive for the next three years. ##SHARELINKS##
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More than 200 people turned out for the Jim Young and Family Benefit Golf Tournament and Dinner on May 23, hosted by the Georgetown Municipal Light Department at the Black Swan Country Club in Georgetown, Massachusetts. The tournament, dinner and associated fund-raising activities were held to benefit Georgetown lineworker Jim Young and his family, following his accident in the fall of 2010. Public power officials from throughout the region participated in the benefit, along with their industry partners, the local business community and co-workers, friends and colleagues of Jim Young from local sports leagues and associations. At the conclusion of the day’s events, Wayne Snow, General Manager of the Georgetown Municipal Light Department, reported that approximately $25,000 had been raised through the generosity of participants, sponsors and donors. On behalf of himself and his family, Jim Young expressed his thanks to all for their kindness and generosity. ##SHARELINKS##
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NEPPA recently welcomed two new members to its Board of Directors: Michael Kirkwood of the Pascoag Utility District and Jonathan Elwell of the Village of Enosburg Falls Water & Light Departments.
Kirkwood Elwell Michael Kirkwood has 31 years in the utility industry having spent 20 years with Commonwealth Electric (now NStar). For 10 years prior to joining Pascoag Utility District as general manager, he worked for energy providers including KeySpan, BGGroup and EquiPower. He has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology and Master of Science Degree in Business Administration from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. Kirkwood replaced Ted Garille at Pascoag, who retired in 2010. He said he is pleased that he is back in a customer-based environment providing the best services at the lowest possible cost. "This is like a smaller version of Commonwealth," he said. "I’m doing the same things only on a smaller scale." He is thrilled to be on the NEPPA board and hopes he can contribute a variety of perspectives drawn from his diverse career. "I hope to bring a well-rounded view of the industry to NEPPA and welcome this opportunity to participate in its governance," he said. Jonathan Elwell holds a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science from Prescott College in Prescott, Ariz. and a Master's in Public Administration from Northern Arizona University. He started his career in municipal government working for a small town in Arizona while he finished his graduate degree. Despite his love for the Southwest, he decided to return to New England where he had grown up in Brattleboro, Vt. He then worked in town government in Rockingham, Vt. before becoming town manager of Manchester, Maine. He has been general manager of the Village of Enosburg Falls Water & Light since September of 2004. When George LaGue of Swanton retired, Elwell volunteered to take his place on the NEPPA Board. "It’s mostly an effort to better educate myself in a larger sphere of electric utility work," he said. "No one lives in a vacuum. Issues in Vermont are not isolated to Vermont and being on the NEPPA Board gives me an opportunity to learn more about the field." ##SHARELINKS##
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Entergy Wholesale Commodities (EWC) markets the energy and capacity associated with roughly 5,000 MWs of highly reliable base load nuclear generation from six plants located in the northern United States. Energy and capacity are sold in wholesale markets to load-serving entities, municipal power supply agencies, state power authorities, co-ops and power marketing and trading firms. EWC offers flexible size, shape and tenor to meet its customers’ needs. EWC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Entergy Corp., a Fortune 500 company with over $12 billion in market capitalization. ##SHARELINKS##
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We invite all public power officials involved in billing, collections and customer service to join us for a workshop on customer bankruptcies which will provide an in-depth review of the laws governing bankruptcy proceedings and the options available to public utilities in the event of customer bankruptcies. For more information, click here.
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Up to this point in "The Learning Corner" my articles have examined various aspects of how individuals learn. This month I thought I’d ask a different question: do organizations learn? The answer to that is a long and complex discussion, but the quick answer is yes. In fact, there is a term for it: "The Learning Organization."
Peter Senge, who helped popularize the term through his book The Fifth Discipline, describes learning organizations as places "where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured" and "where people are continually learning how to learn together." Organizational learning is also defined as "the process of improving actions through better knowledge and understanding." Implied in these descriptions is the fact that in order to prosper—or even survive—organizations must do two things. First, they must be "open systems"; they must take in information and feedback from their environments (the communities and industries in which they operate). Companies that do not do this become "closed systems" that stop learning, stop growing and changing, and eventually go out of business. The second requirement of organizational success is that employees share what they know—that is, they "transfer their knowledge" to others. What is inside people’s heads is more than an abstract concept. It’s a commodity to be developed, recognized and acted upon, one that brings about innovative ideas and new ways of doing things. In addition to individuals learning from each other, "learning organizations" share the following characteristics: · Learning is seen as part of everybody’s job; · Employees are encouraged to think creatively when solving problems; · They are allowed to experiment and take risks; · They keep track of what they learned; and · Learning is supported and rewarded at all levels of the organization. To put it simply, learning organizations are places where instead of hoarding their knowledge, employees make it known to others with the ultimate goal of bringing improvements to the organization. Is your workplace a learning organization? Could it learn to be? ##SHARELINKS##
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