Entergy Arkansas is investing $1.7 billion dollars across our territory between 2016 and 2018 in generation, transmission and distribution improvements to the state’s electrical infrastructure. In fact, throughout the year, projects are taking place in every county where we do business to enhance reliability for our customers.
Many times, distribution operations coordinators make strategic decisions to beef up support with an organized effort to address the needs of the customers in only one day. That’s what happened recently when crews converged to help their utility brothers in Eudora, Wilmot, Dumas, Monticello and Wilmar.
- In Dumas, crews came from Pine Bluff, Helena and Stuttgart to help local servicemen and construction crews along Court Street with several tasks, including installing fuses along laterals, removing pole ground from the primary zone, replacing poles, installing guy-strain insulators on anchor/span guys and installing transformers along Court Street.
- In Wilmot, Pine Bluff crews provided support at the intersection of Church Street and Whittington where they installed switches, repaired ground wires in poor or unsatisfactory conditions, and confirmed they were up to the new Code of Standards for Distribution.
- In Eudora, crews from McGehee and Warren joined local crews along Worthington Street and Grand Lake Loop, where they accomplished several tasks, including adding plastic animal covers to mitigate intrusion from curious squirrels and birds, replacing crossarms and switches, replacing lightning arresters and installing guy-strain wire insulators.
- In Monticello, crews came from Helena, McGehee, Stuttgart and Pine Bluff to help local crews along East Jefferson Avenue. Reliability improvements included replacing older utility poles, installing switches and repairing ground wires in poor condition.
- In Wilmar, crews from Helena, McGehee, Stuttgart and Pine Bluff helped put fiberglass arms on switches and replaced crossarms and utility poles.
These reliability investments totaled $58,000 and were completed with no safety incidents.
“As part of an ongoing proactive program to inspect our facilities, we determined targeted improvements along these specific circuits could increase the reliability of the electrical service for our customers from Dumas to Wilmar to Wilmot,” said Casey Perkins, Entergy Arkansas’ customer service representative serving southeast Arkansas.
