City To Launch Outage Alert Pilot

By Gordon HopkinsThe Fairbury City Council voted to launch a pilot program that will inform citizens about power outages.Fairbury City Line Superintendent Nathan Francis presented the city council with the proposal at a meeting Tuesday evening, Dec. 2, “I’m bringing to you guys a new outage system to try to communicate better with our customers.” “So, this is AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology. They can turn on this app, application, and the customer would receive a message stating that there’s an outage in your area. Prompt them to leave a message,” said Francis. “We can go into that application, and we can see each person that’s left a message.”The application comes from NMPP (Nebraska Municipal Power Pool).Francis explained the advantage of the proposed system, “When we get an outage call, dispatch gets the call, and then they call the guy that’s on call. If there is a major outage, major snowstorm, major circuit that’s out, outage, city office or the dispatch receives hundreds of phone calls, and they really, actually don’t answer every single one of those phone calls.” “We want them to leave a message,” said Francis. “Sometimes it’s hard for us to get that information from dispatch, because, again, they don’t answer every single phone call.”The system will also inform the public of planned outages. Francis said, “When we have planned outages, we print off notices, go knock on doors and try to tell people, hey, when we have planned outages.”Another advantage is the tracking of outages. Francis noted, “That’s a tough area, because we have to, for the Resilience Grants we have to report for the next five to seven years of our outages, and I have kept just paper documentation of it, and we need to come up with a better system.”While the program has not yet been used in Nebraska, it is in use in some locations in Oklahoma. Francis said, “MEAN (Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska) has reached out to those towns, and they’ve said its just worked out great.” The app can be used for other alerts as well, such as street closures and water department alerts, but NMPP advises users not to use the app for too many alerts because some people may choose to opt out if they receive too many messages.The cost of the app is $1,000 a month for one year. Francis said, “It would be a one-year contract pilot program. MEAN would cover the setup fee, and then we just have to pay the monthly fee.”City Councilperson John Ebke expressed his support, “It’s worth $1,000 if it shortens your outages, if it gives people information so they know what’s going on.”The council voted unanimously to approve the pilot program.

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