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Get Ready Now for Potential Winter Weather Problems Summer offers tornadoes, hail, lightning, high winds and floods, creating potentially life threatening conditions and causing millions of dollars in damage each year to electric cooperatives across the United States. Winter creates a different situation. Cold temperatures aren’t usually a problem for your cooperative. Neither are heavy accumulations of snow. Ice, however, is the worst weather scenario that exists for your cooperative. Where a tornado may be on the ground for three miles and and cut through four or five power lines, ice has a tendency to bring down major portions, if not all of a distribution system. And when you have the majority of a distribution system on the ground it does take time to repair this amount of damage. FEC has had to deal with three ice storms since 1993. The longest any member was without power was 5 1/2 days. Last year, in the southern part of Missouri, there were rural electric cooperative members without power for a number of weeks. There are a several things you can do to be prepared for such an extended outage caused by an ice storm. The first thing you need to do is to winterize your home, which is something that should be done anyway. Make sure you have the recommended insulation R-values in your home; caulk around windows and doors; install storm windows or plastic sheeting to cover windows; and clear away any branches on your side of the meter that may fall on your home. Here is a checklist for you to use to be better prepared for any potential extended winter outage.
Winter Peak Alerts are Just Around the Corner It's important to take action on managing the energy usage at your home or business whenever you hear a "Peak Alert" issued by FEC. Why? The demand Farmers' Electric members place on the Associated Electric Cooperation (AECI) generation system has a significant impact on the bill FEC receives from AECI for a 12-month period. You can make a difference in your energy usage during peak times and if enough members take action during the Peak Alert windows, it can make a difference. Whenever you are aware of a Peak Alert, it is important to use as little energy as possible. For example, instead of using the dishwasher and the clothes washer at the same time, just operate one of the appliances. Any appliance that generates heat, such as a clothes dryer, uses a lot of energy. If at all possible, delay using the clothes dryer until the Peak Alert is over. How can you tell when a Peak Alert has been issued? FEC announces the Peak Alert and the time the Peak Alert will run on three area radio stations. They are KCHI FM, Chillicothe, 98.5; KGOZ FM, Gallatin, 101.7; and KMZU FM, Carrollton, 100.7. Generally Peak Alerts are usually called for the late afternoon and evening hours. However, during the winter months, Peak Alerts maybe called in the morning, too, when exceptionally cold temperatures drive the system demand higher as heating systems run longer. Winter Peak Alerts will usually range from 7a.m. to 9 a.m. or 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Occasionally Peak Alerts will be called in the morning and the afternoon, but this is very unusual. Most of the time during the winter months the Peak Alerts will be during the evening hours. Summer Peak Alerts generally will run between 4:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. In all Peak Alerts, the start and end times will vary. For example, at the end of August we had recorded 30 Peak Alerts, totaling 94.5 hours, for an average of 3.15 hours per Peak Alert. Prior to July and August, the average Peak Alert was less than three hours. For the first six months of the year, FEC called a total of 21 Peak Alerts for an overall time of 58.5 hours, for an average of 2.78 hours. Getting
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