Valuable infrastructure improvements underway at HREC

Recently Heartland was awarded a Hazard Mitigation Grant to upgrade a significant portion of its electric system.
Early this year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) approved our application and we were awarded a grant of $12,106,000.
The grant will be used for our mitigation project that has a total cost of $16,142,000.
This project is already underway and is scheduled for completion in three years.
It will be the biggest construction project in the history of the cooperative. The project will rebuild 374 miles of electric lines, approximately 10 percent of our system, to a stronger, more storm-resistant construction standard than is normally used.
The increased cost of this standard of construction is greatly reduced by the grant that pays for 75 percent of the total project. Most if not all of this work would eventually end up in our construction workplans so this is a great opportunity to get it done for a much reduced cost.
How will our members benefit from this project? There are many ways with system reliability being the greatest.
The stronger and more storm-resistant construction standard means less outages when extreme weather conditions hit our system. Our biggest outage situations occur during ice storms and extreme wind storms. The strength of the new lines will better withstand these events and keep the electricity on for our members.
By replacing old electric lines with new electric lines we will reduce the age and deterioration problems the old lines cause. Most of the electric lines being replaced are well over 50 years old. Some are close to 70 years old. Replacing these lines will reduce blinks and outages and improve the quality of electric service.
Replacing 200 miles of copper conductors will remove some of our most troublesome electric lines. Copper conductors have proven to be one of our weakest links when storms strike. Ice, wind and lightning all cause more outages with copper conductors than with aluminum conductors.
Many distribution feeders will be rebuilt to allow alternate routing of power during major outages. These distribution feeders will have more capacity to carry power than they do now. This will allow us to reroute power during emergencies and get more members back on quicker.
A significant amount of normal and routine maintenance and replacement of our electric lines will be accomplished by the project. We will not have to replace 300 decayed poles, trim trees or perform other maintenance on 10 percent of our system for several years. The new electric lines will be durable and nearly maintenance-free for several years.
The economic impact of the project will be significant. The contractor for this project has more than 30 employees working and living in our area for three years. They will buy a lot of fuel, groceries, repair work, supplies and rent from our local businesses during this period.
It is easy to see how this project will benefit our members in many ways. We look forward to reaping the rewards for many years to come.

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