NEPPA eNewsletter

Stowe Mountain Lodge played host to the NEPPA’s Annual Conference this year. This fantastic destination could have easily out-shone any business conference held there with beautiful accommodations, fantastic service and great food. Even the weather decided to allow attendees to enjoy all that Stowe had to offer. 

But, the Annual Conference Committee didn't just find the perfect location; they put together the perfect agenda as well. Attendees were still raving about the content of the speaking program as they we getting in their cars to drive home. When polled it was difficult to find one session that out rated others. 

The last educational session with Jeffrey Carr kept the audience glued even as the sun lit mountains begged for their attention. Carr was the rare economist with wit and humor that brought the current and future economic outlook to tangible understanding even while explaining the theory behind it. A rare instructor, he conducted an interactive session where the audience was encouraged to speak and question as he went.

Earlier that morning, Lori Pickford from Morgan Meguire spoke about some of the many fronts and issues that NEPPA is engaged in monitoring and actively working on for our members. One key highlight was the recent judicial law ruling on transmission rates that was a rare movement in the right direction. This ruling will be closely followed as there are some elements that need to improve and there is concern that it may not be accepted by the FERC.

The session that probably drew the most audience participation was the roundtable discussion on Natural Gas and the Northeast. Betsey Spomer and Mike Dirrane were peppered with questions. The capacity restraints of importing gas into New England that are impacting winter generation and causing volatility in pricing created great fervor among participants as they sought to develop a solution and resolution on the issues.

These great sessions were jump-started by the first two conference speakers; Craig Miller, NERC’s Chief Scientist, dazzled attendees with what current technology is producing and doing for the power industry. Futurist Jack Uldrich followed with a presentation that left us wondering just what the industry will look like in ten years.

A conference’s success is not based on speakers alone. We had a great charitable fundraiser with our Baseball Squares contest. Wayne Keel, our new corporate member SEDC, was the big winner of the Mini Ipad, and donated it back to be auctioned off with the proceeds going to the Benevolent Fund, which aids power workers and families that have suffered losses due to accident and injury on the job. 

One of the most important events of the conference is our Awards Banquet. This year winners tended to be those who had recently retired after a lifetime of commitment and service. For a full list of winners, please click here.  Speaking at the banquet and assisting in the awards program was Mark Crisson, the current Executive Director of APPA, who will be retiring this year.

Attendees ended this well rounded conference laughing with Tuesday’s dinner speaker/entertainer Rusty Dewees. Thanks to Utility Services for this fun end to the conference!

Finally, thank you to our sponsors who made the events possible and to our Hospitality Suite Hosts who kept the frivolity going well into the night!

This award recognizes companies that are associate or corporate members of our association who provide exceptional levels of support or assistance to our organization and our members. Many NEPPA members are already familiar with Stuart Irby for the work that they do. This past year they went beyond what they had previously done. Inspired by our new Training Center, Stuart Irby became real partners with NEPPA to ensure that our center had exactly what it needed for training. It seemed almost weekly that they would be coming by to meet with Steve Socoby or to donate equipment to the meter lab or equipment for the garage. It is through generous affiliates like Stuart Irby that we have been able to outfit our site.

Eric Werner, recent GM retiree of the Hardwick Electric Department, as well as the NEPPA Board, was presented with a NEPPA Service Award, which is given to individuals who have made significant contributions to NEPPA. 

"As a board member this person brought insight to deliberations and the ability to question the status quo. As a fellow Vermonter, he ensured that the needs and desires of those of us from the maple state were well represented. His work to encourage bonds between MEAV and NEPPA and his final volunteer service role as Mutual Aid Task Force member has made NEPPA better for all of us," said Ellen Burt, the General Manager for the Town of Stowe Electric Department and Village of Hyde Park, who presented the award. 

Larry Brownell, NEPPA’s Executive Director, presented the Century Award to NEPPA members celebrating 100 years of service as a public power system. This year East Norwalk Electric Department received the Century Award.

NEPPA’s Distinguished Service Award recognizes individuals who have provided outstanding service to their public power systems and their communities and this year it was awarded to Clint Hutchins, Member Solutions & Marketing Manager at the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative, Inc. (NHEC), and Wayne Snow, recently retired General Manager of Georgetown Municipal Light Department. 

Clint has been employed at NHEC for more than 43 years. In that time, Clint has been instrumental in ensuring that NHEC has provided superior member service. He began in the metering department, was promoted to Working Foreman, and ultimately the Coordinator and Power Diversion Investigator. He then became Division Administrator and the Member Solutions Supervisor. Today, he holds the position of Member Solutions & Marketing Manager. 

Wayne had been at Georgetown for 33 years, and spent 20 years of them as the General Manager. He recently retired at the beginning of May of this year. David Schofield, who replaced Wayne, was interviewed and said "as a resident of Georgetown, I am honored and excited to be the next General Manager of the Georgetown Municipal Light Department. Wayne Snow, Georgetown Light’s previous General Manager, has carefully spent the last 20 years building a tough and reliable system with a well-developed and motivated work force. I am in the enviable position to benefit from all of his hard work and for that I am very grateful. Going forward, I will follow Wayne’s example and continue to improve every facet of the organization so that we can provide the best service possible to our ratepayers."

The Commissioner Service Award is presented annually to Commissioners and Directors of public power utilities who have served their systems with distinction for at least 10 years. NEPPA recognized six individuals for their outstanding service to their utilities with Commissioner Service Awards:

From Groveland Municipal Light Department–Kermit Cross ( Mike Cloutier received the award for Mr. Cross)

From New Hampshire Electric Cooperative, Inc. – Georgie A. Thomas

From the Town of Stowe Electric Dept. in Vermont – Arthur Lloyd

From Kennebunk Light and Power District – Bruce Madore

From Norwich Public Utilities – Diana Boisclair

And from the Village of Johnson Water & Light Department– George Pearlman

This year’s Francis "Skip" Willey Individual Achievement Award was presented to Jackie Pratt from Shrewsbury Electric & Cable Operations. This award is given to an employee of a NEPPA system who demonstrates a professional commitment to public power through personal development and participation in NEPPA’s educational programs and other association activities. Jackie has been a champion of our educational efforts assuring that the needs of those in utility offices were represented and met. She has served on the Education and Training Committee and the Customer Service Committee. She has been a proponent of distance learning and a frequent speaker at our meetings and conferences.

This award is for a specific accomplishment advancing the interests of public power and is not usually given out every year. John really distinguished himself in representing his utility, NEPPA and the industry to elected and appointed federal leaders. At the request of his Senator, he was asked to testify on electric reliability and how public power has success where others stumble. He then met with officials from the Department of Energy, FEMA and President Obama regarding Super Storm Sandy and the ensuing response. These meetings elevated the profile of public power and it’s New England Utilities in a positive way. 

The person of the year award is given for sustained, outstanding service and contributions to NEPPA and to public power. When discussing honorees, the committee felt there were two worthy nominees this year.

The first recipient, Vinnie Cameron, recently retired from Reading Municipal Light Department after a distinguished career. During his volunteerism with NEPPA he served as Board Treasurer, frequent rally participant, and speaker at conferences. Vinnie concluded his service to NEPPA in June of this year, seeing us through another audit whilewrapping up the financial aspect of our Training Center.

The second recipient was Brian Evans-Mungeon. He has been a great educator to all of us on Cyber Security and all of the regulations and nuances associated in this area. He has also been a great resource to small utilities on NERC compliance and content and been a great supporter of the Annual Conference year after year.

 

Sponsored by Invoice Cloud 

Grand Prize:  Wayne Keel, SEDC

1st Prize: Wayne Keel, SEDC

2nd Prize: Earl Hansen, NHEC

Wayne Keel then re-donated his prize to benefit the Benevolent Fund and it was auctioned off at the dinner Tuesday night.  Brian Evans-Mongeon was the highest bidder at $300.

Total generated for the Benevolent Fund was $800! Thank you to all our members!

Each year, NEPPA is the beneficiary of financial and other contributions by its affiliates and friends through their sponsorship of the NEPPA Annual Conference. Their contributions are very important to this event, and NEPPA is grateful for their support. The 2013 sponsors were:

Duncan & Allen
                               

PURMA

Starkweather & Shepley Insurance, Inc.

Utility Services, Inc.

Century Bank

Rubin & Rudman

The Okonite Company

Morgan Meguire, LLC

Energy New England

Invoice Cloud, Inc.

Downes Associates

Marmon Utility

TCI of NY, LLC

HQ US

Arthur J Hurley Company, Inc.

Spiegel & McDiarmid

InsightAtlast, LLC    

SAMsix

What happened to the summer? Driving back from the Annual conference, I actually noticed some leaves beginning to change. While I welcome the color and cooler temperatures, I wouldn't mind slowing things down a little; it seems that NEPPA has seen constant change in my short, tenured 22 months.

People have been a large part of this change process; we have turned over four Board seats in this brief time frame. The latest two have been the retirements of Vinnie Cameron and Eric Werner. Both of these individuals have been cornerstones of the industry and NEPPA leadership. Anyone who was at the awards banquet in Stowe will tell you that the individual greetings that Eric and Vinnie received by the audience was unparalleled. 

NEPPA has always been fortunate to have outstanding member leaders and Greg Destasi and Craig Myotte have assumed the seats vacated by Vinnie and Eric’s respective retirements. Greg is the General Manager of Paxton Municipal Light Department and Craig is the General Manager of the Village of Morrisville Water & Light Department. Welcome Craig and Greg! Additionally, the following Board members were re-elected:

• John Tzimorangas              Energy New England, MA
• Mark KellyMiddleton            Municipal Electric Dept., MA
• Calvin AmesMadison         Electric Works, ME
• Michael Cloutier                  Groveland Municipal Light Department, MA
• Duncan Hastings                Village of Johnson, VT
• Jonathan Elwell                   Village of Enosburg Falls, VT
• James Lavelle                      Holyoke Gas & Electric Dept., MA

NEPPA has additional changes scheduled over the next several months. As I wrote about last month, we have purchased a communications system for our Mutual Aid program. Scott Edwards, the Chair of NEPPA's mutual aid committee, and other coordinators will begin beta testing it shortly and it should be vetted and active prior to the first winter storm. If you have not been contacted for your utility’s primary and secondary contacts, please reach out to your regional coordinator as soon as possible.

NEPPA’s External Mutual Aid program has also been completed and is just undergoing legal review. It should be published for members by the end of the month, so keep an eye out for it. 

The remaining change that is scheduled for NEPPA relates to technology. In the next several weeks we will have cameras and specialized software installed, which will give us the flexibility of recording and editing training videos or live streaming. This will dramatically impact our ability to provide you the best training content in the most convenient manner for all of your staff.

Earlier this year we requested feedback on our website, so we could begin the development of a new site that is easier to use, provides better access to our robust content and helps us deliver content that we have previously been unable to deliver. Courtney Crouse in our office has been diligently working on this and it should be unveiled in early 2014. If you have any feedback or suggestions, please reach out to her at ccrouse@neppa.org.  Court also recently produced the first issue of our new newsletter called Lineworker’s Quarterly. If you were not in attendance at the General Foreman’s Roundtable, please keep an eye out for it as it will be mailed to our utilities sometime at the beginning of September.

None of these changes are possible without a great staff and volunteers, so allow me to say thank you for a moment to the folks responsible for two great events this past month:

First) the General Foremen’s Roundtable; thank you to Bob Henriksen and Steve Socoby for their work in creating and conducting this event. We will aim to make this a semi-annual event per the feedback received.

Second: NEPPA’s Annual Conference; we have reviewed the written evaluations and the word of response received has been phenomenal. There was not one aspect of the event that I have not heard great comments about. This event takes a great deal of effort from committee and staff. The committee works on finding the venue and putting together the speakers and program. So thanks to:

John Bilda, Chair

Ellen Burt

John Clark

Gary Babin

Jim Bakas

Mark Kelly

Kristin DiGirolamo, Staff

Courtney Miller, Staff

Thank you for the great location and program.

Besides Kristin and Courtney, Steve Socoby and Courtney Crouse all worked to ensure that attendees’ experiences were exceptional. Thank you all!

American Public Power Association's July- August 2013 Issue of their magazine included an entitled called "The Great Northeast Blackout; Ten Years Later" by Brent Barker. It re-tells the story of the blackout that occurred 10 years ago throughout New England in August 2003. 

To read the full story, please go here: http://www.neppa.org/pdfs/APPABlackoutArticle.pdf

Foxborough, MA: Energy New England (ENE), LLC, an energy cooperative based in Foxborough, Massachusetts, announced that the Littleton Electric Light Department has joined the ENE family of customers beginning August 1, 2013.  LELD is a 55 MW electric system that provides service to their customers in Littleton and Boxborough. Littleton becomes the 20th customer of the ENE Wholesale Power group, who provides power supply and risk management services, and has seen continued growth over the past 5 years in their customer base.

"The Littleton Electric Light Department (LELD) is looking forward to working with ENE on power supply management services.  LELD has historically maintained some of the lowest electric rates in New England and we see our relationship with ENE as an opportunity to secure this positions both short and long term.  In this complex and ever changing market, LELD needs a partner who can stay ahead of the curve in meeting our demanding real time, day ahead and forecasting obligations and we believe ENE is the partner to undertake these tasks", remarked Savas Danos, General Manager of LELD.

"The addition of Littleton continues to strength the position of ENE in the power supply services market and we are excited to have them join us as a new customer, said John G. Tzimorangas, President and CEO of ENE. "We have worked with Savas Danos and Scott Edwards on projects in the past and look forward to continuing our relationship and assisting Littleton in maintaining their high quality of service and low rates for their customers."

 

The Littleton Electric Light Department, founded in 1912, serves approximately 6,500 customers in the Towns of Littleton and Boxborough and also provides water services to those customers.

Formed in 1998, ENE has grown significantly over the past few years, and is a leading provider of both supply and demand side services to the public power community. The company works with more than 35 municipal systems on a dedicated basis in the provision of one or more supply or demand-side services. In addition, it manages more than 950 MW of load and 550 MW of generation throughout New England.

Dear public power utility leaders:

I am sending you this message to request your participation in a program for sharing of timely and actionable cyber and physical threat information.  On November 16th of last year, I reached out to APPA members to encourage registration with and use of the Electricity Sector Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ES-ISAC), a secure portal to engage in proactive, two-way information sharing with the ES‐ISAC, the federal government, and other utilities about incidents and threats to the power system.  

Attached and pasted below is a letter from the ES-ISAC requesting 24/7 emergency contact information for your Security Operations Centers, Network Operations Centers and Electric System Operations Centers.  The letter also requests that any personnel interested in accessing the ES-ISAC’s Private Portal sign up at the links provided.

 

APPA staff supports the ES-ISAC as a robust and effective delivery mechanism for incident communications and government-industry coordination; please ensure appropriate personnel within your utility have provided the contacts requested to facilitate this information sharing. If you have not already signed up for the portal, please designate a key staff member to do so.

Should you have any questions about this request, the APPA point of contact will be Nathan Mitchell, who can be reached at 202-467-2925 or nmitchell@publicpower.org.

Mark Crisson

President and CEO

American Public Power Association

1875 Connecticut Ave. NW Suite 1200, 

Washington, DC 20009-5715

To read the letter from ES-ISAC requesting 24/7 emergency contact information for your Security Operations Centers,  Network Operations Centers and Electric System Operations Center,  please click here.

Yes folks, it’s that time again! Starting in September, NEPPA will be mailing out the 2014 Education & Training Catalog and the 2014 Safety & Training registration forms, so please be on the lookout for them. The sooner you send in your registration forms, the sooner next year’s calendar will be completed and you will be notified of your yearly schedule. If you have certain days or times of the month that you require classes be held, please make a note of this somewhere on the registration form, so we can take this into consideration before beginning the scheduling process. NEPPA provides on-site training to about 84 utilities and municipalities in the Northeast region, as well as parts of New York; therefore it is very important that we receive your registrations forms in a timely manner. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to speak with Courtney Miller at 978.540.2200 or cmiller@neppa.org. You may also contact Steve Socoby, the Director of Training, at ssocoby@neppa.org.

Customer Service Conference 2013

September 12, 2013

Old Sturbridge Village

Sturbridge, MA

November 6-8

Water's Edge Resort

Westbrook, CT

For more information, click here.

The General Foremen’s Roundtable held on August 15, 2013, at the NEPPA Training Center in Littleton, MA, began with a presentation by NEPPA’s Executive Director, Larry Brownell, and covered the new program that will be used in Mutual Aid Events starting later this year. The discussion was focused around events that may occur outside of the NEPPA region and how implementation will be handled. 

The next topic on the agenda was a reminder to all the participants that there is a deadline for Global Harmonization training that must be conducted before December 1, 2013 to be OSHA compliant. A recent inspection of a NEPPA member’s work zone setup, that was conducted jointly by OSHA and Mass HighWay, was also covered and the group was encouraged to make sure that their work zones are set up properly.

The next subject for discussion was the revival of the Lineworker’s Rodeo, which was well received. Most of the attendees voiced support for such an event to take place sometime next year. Mike Cloutier, General Manager of Groveland Municipal Light Department, is leading a committee that is presently working to investigate the logistics of holding a rodeo in the future and any help and ideas are welcome.

A Safety Summit was a focal point of the meeting. It started with a discussion of a recent fatality involving a lineworker in Maine and was followed by a short presentation by Mr. Don Dohr of H.D. Electric. It covered the use of a personal voltage detector and how it might be used in storm restoration or nighttime work to help protect lineworkers from unseen and unexpected electrical hazards. Several of those in attendance stated that such devices were already being used by some NEPPA members.  Some utilities encouraged their lineworkers to use personal voltage detectors during storm restoration efforts or during mutual aid assignments, especially when working at night. 

Bob Henriksen then conducted a thought provoking presentation on "Are your crews working safely?" Bob presented many clear challenges to everyone in attendance to take ownership of the safety of each crew member. He also warned about the new dangers of backfeed from solar panels and backup generators that could present new dangers to electrical lineworkers during prolonged outages. The group was visibly moved by the Safety Summit and a new commitment to safety was evident.

NEPPA plans on hosting at least two General Foremen's roundtables each year and is always interested in topics that are relevant to all its’ members. If you have any ideas that may be of interest to the group, please contact Steve Socoby at the NEPPA office for inclusion in one of the upcoming meetings. He can be reached at 978.540.2200 or ssocoby@neppa.org.

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The House and Senate began their annual August recess on Aug. 5, and are scheduled to return on Sept. 9.  

The government runs out of annual spending authority at the end of its fiscal year - Sept. 30 - but House Republicans are talking about passing a short-term extension, possibly to Dec. 15, to provide breathing room as they debate a new debt-ceiling increase.