Local News

OCEC Wildfire Mitigation Efforts Updated

Okanogan County Electric Co-op

Jun 22, 2021

The OCEC Operation Department has moved into summer wildfire season system monitoring. This means that the crew has disabled the automatic reclosing on the circuit breakers that feed the following areas:

8-mile (Upper Chewuch)
Davis Lake
Hoot-n-Holler (which includes all Twisp River services)
Pearrygin
Rendezvous
Upper Beaver Creek

These reclosers will be disabled until the end of fire season. When a red-flag warning is issued for our area, OCEC will disable all other reclosers except for the Town of Winthrop until the warning is lifted.

Disabling reclosers, either in elevated fire risk or red-flag conditions, has the effect of both lengthening the duration and increasing the number of outages while reducing the possibilities of “sparks” from contacts. When the reclosers are set on “non-reclose” the breaker will operate and the line will be de-energized until OCEC crews can manually inspect the line for problems. Once the line is manually inspected and is confirmed all-clear, the line will be re-energized. This will possibly create longer, more frequent outages in these areas.

Taking these pro-active fire safety steps may cause more frequent and longer outages but we hope that our members will understand the benefits of reduced risk outweigh the increase in possible outages.

For more information please review our full Wildfire Mitigation Plan at www.ocec.coop.