When people hurriedly get ready for volatile winter weather, electricity generators are already prepared — and have been for months.
As a generation and transmission cooperative, Wabash Valley Power Alliance (WVPA) works with the power plants it owns to ensure that they are ready to weather the worst each season. That means handling searing summer heat and the frigid freezing lows and snow that bear down on the Midwest each winter. WVPA and generation plants in Illinois and Indiana prepare for wind, snow accumulation, and frigid temperatures that could freeze equipment or cause dangerous outdoor working conditions.
“Being in the northern half of the U.S., winterization has existed for decades,” said WVPA Generation Engineer Cordell Miller. “We start in the fall, and we’ve been dealing with these issues for a long time so we typically know what to look out for as we prep.”
WVPA and plant employees prepare for potential issues that can impact plant and employee safety and confirm plant reliability. They winterize equipment and stock up on salt and supplies to melt snow and ice, as well as winter protective gear for employees who work outdoors. They also verify that facilities have cots and food available in case winter storms make travel difficult and staff remains at the site.
“The reason we care and are so diligent about winterizing our plants is to make sure they are reliable in severe weather to ensure that people have power,” Miller said. “They need power particularly in the winter, when the extreme cold is most dangerous for people.”
WVPA also has an operations center that provides real-time monitoring of the electric grid. Operators can see, 24 hours a day, if there is an outage or other challenge causing outages, and they quickly work with crews to make repairs and restore power.
“The work we do as an entire organization is to ensure that we can reliably deliver affordable energy at all times, even winter days when the temperature drops below zero,” said Matt Moore, executive vice president of power supply at WVPA. “We prepare for the extreme weather to minimize risk and ensure that the families and businesses we and our member co-ops serve have the energy they need to power their day.”