Great River Energy achieves strong reliability in 2024
Keeping the lights on is Great River Energy’s core business and the cooperative delivered in every regard in 2024. Great River Energy closely monitors reliability by tracking outages affecting its member-owners’ distribution substations that are triggered by issues on the transmission system.
In 2024, the cooperative recorded its third best year for reliability since it started tracking in 1999.
This data helps identify areas for improvement and supports the ongoing effort to deliver reliable and dependable electric service.
“We are proud of our record of reliability and the excellent electric service we provide to our member-owners,” said Great River Energy’s Vice President and Chief Transmission Officer Priti Patel.
Great River Energy carefully plans and maintains its system to ensure reliability. That said, weather is often the biggest factor impacting reliability and 2024 was no exception.
“While the nation experienced numerous severe weather events in 2024, Minnesota largely avoided the worst of these. The year was recorded as the warmest on record and extremely dry, which played a significant role in maintaining strong system reliability,” said Great River Energy’s System Operations Director Mark Peterson.
Great River Energy categorizes the most significant outage events on its system as major outage events. These are events, such severe storms, that have caused major disruptions in service and are much more significant than day-to-day outages. Great River Energy tracks them separately. For the second year in a row, there were no situations that qualified as major outage events.
“Severe weather is the leading cause of outage time,” Peterson said. “In recent years, we studied Minnesota’s various weather and climate threats and the risks they pose to our assets. This has helped us better mitigate the impact of severe weather events on our transmission system.”
Beyond weather-related challenges, Great River Energy has implemented a variety of initiatives to further enhance reliability. Great River Energy holds reliability meetings with each of its member-owner cooperatives every other year to understand what challenges each cooperative faces.
Additionally, Great River Energy has incorporated advanced technologies such as partial discharge cameras to detect faulty insulators, which can cause outages. Great River Energy also completed an innovative pilot project that uses existing fiber optic cables as sensors to detect problems on transmission lines, and has installed raptor guards and pole wraps to reduce the risk of outages caused by birds and other animals.
Great River Energy remains focused on maintaining and improving the reliability of its system, ensuring that member-owners enjoy reliable and dependable electricity.
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