As a member-owned electric cooperative, our top priority is not profits or shareholders – it’s you, our members. One of the many ways we show our commitment to the membership of McKenzie Electric (MEC) is by ensuring our reliability remains high. So, when you flip a light switch, turn on your favorite tv series or toss a load of laundry into the dryer, you can count on the power to be there when you need it.

Mckenzie Electric’s peak system load was recorded at 853 megawatts in 2024. For reference, that’s enough electricity to power around 500,000 homes in North Dakota. While standard operating load is below that, MEC’s engineers must account for the extra juice needed to power the lives of our members. This begins with long-range planning and meeting regularly with large power consumers, city and county planners, and new businesses. By anticipating and planning for growth, we ensure that power will be available to new members while also ensuring it doesn’t cause an adverse impact on our current membership.

As growth within our service area continues, we have conducted comprehensive planning that analyzed the trends and modeled new load forecasts to determine what additional distribution, transmission, and substation infrastructure will be needed to meet the needs of our members. We have already begun the engineering efforts with several of the study recommendations and will continue to advance several other projects throughout the coming year. These projects are essential to provide our members with the capacity they need and the reliability they have come to expect. These new projects are built to modern specifications with new technology and stronger material requirements which help improve our reliability when faced with adverse weather conditions.

Other proactive, preventative initiatives that MEC undertakes to make our system more resilient are:

• Pole Testing: Our standard pole testing procedure ensures that 10% of MEC’s entire system is tested each year for rot and other irregularities. The testing process includes looking for damaged hardware and finding any vulnerabilities that require immediate attention.
   
• Tree Trimming: Since trees continually grow and are vulnerable to storm damage, MEC frequently conducts tree trimming near lines and hardware. During line inspections and as our crews are on their way to locations, they often note if they see trees growing too close or leaning near cooperative equipment. If action is required, a service order is created to address the issue before it becomes an emergency tree trim.
   
• Preventative Maintenance Inspections: With over 80 substations scattered throughout our service territory, our preventative maintenance program is aimed at inspecting every piece of equipment located within a substation yard. By conducting these frequent inspections, we have real-time knowledge of the health of our most important devices.
   
• Comprehensive Outage Reviews: MEC utilizes an outage management system to track all outages that occur on our system. We review the data frequently and look for areas that are   impacted by outages more often. We review those details closely and look for corrective actions that can be taken to improve the quality of service.

As we move into 2025 and look to the future, we remain committed to powering the lives of our members by delivering safe, reliable, and affordable power. With a dedicated team working behind the scenes and continued investment in infrastructure paired with forward-thinking planning, we’re building a cooperative where growth and reliability go hand in hand.