News & Events
Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative Reliability Upgrades
February 14, 2017 - Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative is committed to making smart investments and improvements to deliver electricity that is affordable, reliable and cleaner – for our members now and for our members of the future. Our initiative is a territory-wide, aggressive plan to harden our system, making it more resilient and secure. These enhancements will improve power quality and reliability for our members.
Investments are being made in the following areas: reliability upgrades, transmission improvements, technology and system upgrades, and communications network upgrades. This plan enables us to spread the costs and maintenance across several years and take advantage of timely economic opportunities.
Below are some of the achievements accomplished during the year 2017:
Reliability Projects
• Technology upgrade to include hourly voltage monitoring of strategically located meters (such as end of the line) and twice daily reads of all meters on the system.
• Technology upgrade to include daily “blink” (momentary outages) presentation on system maps*
• Upgraded 4100 feet, 20 spans 3-phase primary conductor on Beaver Run Road, Lafayette.
• Installed remote (SCADA) enabled three-phase recloser on Libertyville Road, Wantage.
• Replaced 800 feet underground cable at various locations in development in Vernon
* Note: The daily “blink” checks are a form of outage prevention, where an event like a tree
branch making contact with a distribution line can be found, trimmed or removed before it causes
an actual outage. Sussex REC is one of the only utilities doing this kind of outage prevention
and blink detection…anywhere!
Line
• Visual inspection of entire 34.5kV transmission system (23 miles)
• Complete visual line inspection of 5 feeders off two substations (Wykertown and Lake Neepaulin)
• Oil Testing –All Substation Transformers, Substation Regulators, 34.5kV Line Reclosers
o Oil testing checks for moisture or gas buildup within the device, catching failures before they happen
• Infrared Camera Inspections of all Substations and on all 3-phase lines (approximately 125 miles)
o Infrared cameras can show “hot spots” where connections could be failing, preventing future problems that could result in outages
• Line Recloser Maintenance – 10 Reclosers
Poles
• Pole Inspections - 680 poles (12 year inspection cycle)
• Replacements – 43 pole replacements
Utility Warns Of Phone Scam
December 1, 2017 - Unfortunately, in today’s world, scams are prevalent. Even the wariest consumers can be duped, however, and scammers are developing new tactics every day. Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative was made aware of a phone scam today when a community member received a message from someone claiming to be SREC and the caller ID said Sussex Rural Electric. Read more
