Public Power - June 2008 - (Page 37)

“ recently, Maricopa was a sleepy little community with a couple of bars and a couple of churches,” said Jim Hartdegen, director of land management and public relations for Electrical District No.3, the Arizona city’s public power utility. “A few years ago, more and more people began coming around to purchase a few acres and build homes, but there was still not a lot of growth.” However, things have been changing, according to recent U.S. Census data. Reporting 30,500 residents in 2006 and 33,000 in 2007, Maricopa—known as “Copa Town“ by its young residents—is expected to burgeon to 125,000 people by 2010; that’s up from just 1,040 residents in 2000. Until 2002, non-agricultural power to the Maricopa area was provided by Arizona Public Service. But that has changed. “In 2002, ED-3 decided that it wanted to serve all customers within our boundary,” said Brett Benedict, ED-3’s interim general manager. The utility is working on an agreement to make ED-3 the main electricity provider in the area. “All new customers coming into the Maricopa area are customers of ED-3.” According to Benedict, the utility’s board of directors had a vision for serving the growing community. “We (ED-3 and APS) had been running into each other so many times over the years that the board felt it would be better for the community to have a single service provider,” he said. For Maricopa, about 20 miles south of Phoenix, population growth is largely a result of urban sprawl, spurred by the construction of a two-lane expressway to Maricopa from Phoenix, which began in the 1980s. “As a result, land speculators started to buy up land around Maricopa, and developers also started looking at opportunities for building,” said Hartdegen. With the urban influx, the locals decided it was time to incorporate. Maricopa was officially incorporated as a city Oct. 15, 2003. The first City Council took office June 1, 2004. For a small public power utility with a history of serving only the agricultural needs of its customers of a few hundred www.APPAnet.org Until ED-3 had one employee in 2002. Today it has 49 full-time employees. Photo by Katie Benedict people, such a large influx meant, essentially, building from the ground up. “The biggest challenge in recent years has been working to become a totally selfsufficient power company,” said Dan Thelander, chairman of ED-3’s board. “We really started from scratch. Prior to that, most of the maintenance and operations work was done by APS.” As an electrical district formed in the 1920s, Electrical District No. 3 was set up solely to deliver hydro power from the dams on the Colorado River to the communities of Maricopa and Stanfield, Ariz., as well as the surrounding agricultural communities. In fact, according to Benedict, ED-3 still consisted of just one employee in 2002—the general manager. “We subcontracted a lot of the other work to a sister electrical district close by.” As a result of growth, ED-3 now has 49 full-time employees, an ongoing journey lineworker training program and an array of in-house, on-the-job training to get administrative employees up to speed. “We have used a lot of American Public Power Association training materials, and many of us attend APPA training programs every year,” said Benedict. Growth, of course, means more than just more people. It means adding infrastructure, said Benedict. Since the sprawl began, ED-3 has grown from about $30 million in assets to $150 million today, has added several loops of 69-kV transmission lines and has doubled the number of substations. “It has been a challenge to establish easements and rights-of-way so we can build the new lines,” said Hartdegen. “Years ago, the utility used to be able to do this on a handshake. Now, there is a lot of documentation to go through.” Generating enough electricity, service outages and garnering community support have also not been easy. The utility still has access to hydro power from the Colorado River dams and from APS through contracts, but has plans for new generation. The majority of new residents migrate from nearby Phoenix, but some come from California and the Midwest. “A lot of these people decide that they want to build great rooms with 15-foot ceilings, and then are surprised when they receive their utility bills,” he said. “We have to explain to them that this is the desert, and it does get hot. “In the past, if someone ran into a pole, people seemed to accept the fact that they would be without power for awhile until we got it back on. Now, a lot of people expect power restored almost immediately. We do a good job of getting the power back on, but we have to explain to people that, five years ago, we JUNE 2008 37 http://www.APPAnet.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Public Power - June 2008

Public Power - June 2008 Contents Perspective 10 Questions Finding Common Ground on Climate Change Solutions A Patchwork Approach to Renewable Energy Whose Grid Is It Anyway? The Little Utility That Could Benchmarking Customer Service Can Prairie Hay Power Your Town? Storming the Control Room Investing in the Smart Grid Coming of Age: Superconducting Cables Community Broadband Economic Development Customer Service Human Resources For Governing Boards Safety Parting Shot

Public Power - June 2008

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