Published 08/04/2008 
Johnson, VT – Vermont Electric Cooperative, Inc. (VEC) officials announce that significant system upgrades will be made at the Fairfax 1 substation during August. The distribution lines connected to this substation supply electricity to members in the Fairfax, Fairfield, Fletcher, Georgia, and St. Albans areas. Unprecedented and severe storms, in combination with aging substation and transmission line equipment, have caused more outages than expected for this area in recent months.

 “We clearly recognize that improving the reliability in the Fairfax area is imperative and we are committed to making significant improvements in the upcoming weeks,” said Jeffery Wright, chief operating officer.  “This year’s weather patterns, beginning with the March ice storm, have stressed the Fairfax infrastructure and have exposed several areas of weakness in our transmission connection,” commented Wright.  Additionally, the lines feeding members in these towns face challenges common to all electric utilities such as managing vegetation effectively and keeping up with infrastructure upgrades. 

VEC members in this target area have experienced as many as 12 major outages in the past 36 months. Corrective measures are expected to improve reliability in this service territory which affects approximately 1,100 of VEC’s 34,000 members. 

In order to accomplish the improvements to the infrastructure and improve reliability, VEC will need to impose a planned outage to these members. The outage is scheduled for Thursday, August 14^th from 11:30 a.m. to noon. The raindate will be Friday, August 15^th, from 11:30 a.m. to noon. All members who will be affected by the planned outage will receive advance notification by mail and VEC will also run radio announcements closer to the date.  “We acknowledge that no outage goes without inconveniences to our members. However, we expect to minimize the duration of this scheduled outage to less than one hour,” said Liz Gamache, Manager of Corporate Services. “We greatly appreciate our members continued patience as we work toward improving the reliability of our system. A small scheduled outage now should mean fewer outages in the future,” added Gamache.