Pulaski Electric System is on budget and on schedule to complete its portion of grant-funded broadband expansion in Giles County.
Luke Jones eyes a finish at the rim in last Saturday’s region quarterfinal. Jennifer Hawkins / Pulaski Citizen
PES CEO Scott Newton made that presentation to the Giles County Commission in early February, along with an update of the project’s current status.
Key to the update is that PES is on track to complete its portion of broadband expansion in Giles County by July 2025, Newton said, adding that the self-imposed deadline puts PES a month ahead of the state contract completion date of Aug. 31, 2025.
“There’s a one-year extension available, but we plan to be done before the contract date,” Newton said.
As of January 2024, PES has completed 70 mainline miles of fiber optic cable construction and has paid out $8.7 million in state funds and PES- and county-matching funds, Newton said.
Once completed, Giles Countians living north of Highway 64 and in areas south and east of Pulaski that are in Pulaski Electric System’s electric service area will have access to its broadband internet service.
There are a number of locations near or adjacent to the grant-funded areas, not covered by the grant dollars, that PES will pay to complete.
The PES board of directors has already approved an additional $500,000 to extend service to grant-adjacent areas to help reach those within 1,000 feet of grant areas or grant-connecting roads. This is expected to make broadband available to an additional 1,160 Giles Countians.
PES split its broadband expansion into four phases, which Newton updates the PES Board of Directors on each month.
Phase I is south of Pulaski, generally to Industrial Park South.
Newton said construction of the mainline for Phase I is complete, and residents in these areas are currently being installed.
Newton said sign-ups for Phase I have been completed with 246 customers signed-up and scheduled to be connected. Of 246 customer drops (fiber from the mainline to the pole near the home) scheduled, 189 have been completed.
“That’s just under 40 percent of everyone passed in the service area, which is right on goal,” Newton noted.
Sign-ups are underway now for Phase II, which will include the southeastern Giles County areas of Elkton, Ardmore, Dellrose and others within the PES electric service territory.
Mainline construction is underway and set to be complete by May 30, with customer drops and installs expected to start by May 1.
Mainline construction for Phase III is scheduled to begin March 25, 2024, in the northwestern PES service territory, which is the biggest area the expansion project will cover.
Service installs in the Phase III area are scheduled to begin this November.
Phase IV is the northeastern Giles County territory served by PES, with the mainline construction set to begin in November, and installs expected to start in May of 2025.
“In the process, we are replacing over 1,000 electrical poles with an average age of 40 years,” Newton said of additional benefits of the project. “And we will have completed 500 miles of vegetation clearing above and beyond what is usually done over the same time period. Our infrastructure will be better, and the reporting we receive due to fiber optic AMI metering will allow us to receive and respond to outages faster.”
When completed, Newton said PES is expected to have fiber optic broadband service available to an additional 4,033 customers.
“We are on track,” he added.
And broadband is among those services that improves PES’s ability to diagnose and respond to electric outages.
PES Energize offers Gateway routers to its customers at no monthly charge, offering parental controls, the ability to view connected devices on the customer’s network, easily change and update passwords and equipped to handle up to 1 gigabyte of speed.
“That’s the advantage on the customer side, but the advantage on our side is the Gateway reduces how many times we have to travel to a customer,” Newton said. “We can diagnose, troubleshoot and maybe even fix a problem without ever leaving the building, and that reduces our expenses.
Another big item that is among the vital but mostly unseen parts of keeping PES internet and phone up and running during a power outage is the battery back-up and back-up generator units.
Newton said those are currently being replaced, requiring cranes to remove the old units that have been in service since 2007.
Electric
As broadband expansion continues, so do maintenance and upgrades to the electric service and services that support the distribution of those services.
Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) meters are part of this process. Newton pointed to the fact that the AMI system tells PES there’s an outage and often crews have repaired it before anyone even knows the power was out.
“Before, we wouldn’t know about an outage sometimes until the customer came home after a long day of work and found that their power was out,” Newton said. “Then we’d have to send a crew out late in the day, and the customer would have to wait for the outage to be fixed. The AMI system, transmitting over the fiber optic network, notifies us about the outage, and we can respond and correct the issue before the customer gets home. The customer comes home and sees the clock on their stove or microwave blinking, and that is the only clue that the power went off.”
PES is well under way with year two of its five-year capital improvement plan and has initiated parts of year three at a cost of around $18 million.
There are three focus areas for the electrical system’s five-year capital plan — replacing end of life equipment, upgrading lines that near capacity due to growth and creating more connecting (tie) lines to reduce the impact of outages.
System transformers from the 1960s and 70s are at or near end of life, Newton said, noting that these are multi-million dollar pieces of equipment that are being replaced in phases.
The 1971 primary substation transformers are currently being replaced and the 1963-67 transformers at the substation at Frito Lay have been ordered, but the lead time is almost two years away.
“We ordered the primary transformers 86 weeks ago, and the first one is just arriving, despite an expected 74-week delivery time,” Newton said.
As for capacity, Newton said several lines are being upgraded to handle more capacity in areas where growth has maxed out what the lines can provide.
“If you see a pole with just one line, everybody is on that one line; if you see three lines, load is shared and can handle greater load,” Newton explained, adding that currently PES is upgrading 4.8 miles along Highway 64 East and Indian Creek.
Other large projects include:
• 1.5 miles of new wiring/poles from Frito Lay area to Industrial Loop Road are under construction.
• This summer new wiring/poles along 1.2 miles of Cedar Lane will be under construction.
• Engineering for 3.4 miles of line/poles from Frito Lay to Wales Station Road has started.
• Engineering of 1.4 miles of line/poles along Fall River Road is underway.
Three of the six transformers in the Fafnir/Timken substation are being replaced with used transformers. Newton said he expects these transformers to provide PES with an additional 20 years of service at the substation.
“We are in year two of a five-year plan that includes multi-million dollar projects,” Newton said.
Within the past few years, PES has upgraded its Network Operations Center (NOC) that displays an outage map on large screens during major outages.
Newton said PES’s customer service team is brought into the Network Operations Center to provide them with real-time information and better communication with customers.
The center is also used for security, with camera shots displayed from all of PES’s facilities and substations.
Providing diverse payment options has been another ongoing project for PES.
Customers can now pay at Walgreens, CVS, Dollar General and Walmart using the “Pay by Cash” option in the SmartHub App, Newton said, noting that reduced foot traffic in PES’s main office helps reduce costs.
