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Doug Bechtel
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Before I get into my topic for this week, let me assure our members on Lopez that we are very aware of the irritating blinks you are seeing. A number of these blinks are legitimate and have been caused by distribution outages. The ones that are driving us nuts are the very short blinks that happen for no apparent reason. Our SCADA system confirms what you are telling us on the telephone - that our voltage on one phase drops from its normal 120 volts to close to zero for about a second. This is just long enough to screw up your digital clocks and lose the data on your computer.
We had the manufacturer of the substation equipment up Wednesday to go over the equipment, but we found nothing wrong. I have pretty much come to the conclusion that the problem is caused by a loose connection somewhere in the substation. Since it would take several hours with the power shut off to check all our con-nections, we are bringing in some special test equipment on August 29 that will let us find any loose connec-tions from afar. Depending on what we find, we are going to need a short outage to make repairs to stop these blinks. Let me assure our Lopez members that stopping these blinks is very high on our priority list.
Now, to our main topic: disconnecting those members who don’t pay their electric bills. Disconnection for nonpayment is not meant to be a punishment but is to protect those members who do pay their bills from the added indirect costs of collection. I don’t think we do anyone a favor by letting them run up a bill for several months without paying. If someone has trouble paying their electric bill in one month, there is no way they could pay the bill if they owe for six months.
We just had a young lady in to pay her bill after having been disconnected. As I listened to the discussion, it drove home the point that most of us are likely to have a financial problem at one time or another during our lives. There is a big difference between those who are having a short-term financial problem caused by an unexpected expense and those who seem to chronically live beyond their incomes and feel they shouldn’t have to pay their electric bills until after they have paid for their RV, pleasure boat or new vehicle.
This month, we tried something new and different. The certified disconnect notices were mailed out slightly more than a week before disconnection day, rather than three weeks as had been the practice. Two things were accomplished by sending the notices out this way. First, we have many members who pay us regularly every month but, because of their cash flow, had always gotten a disconnect notice (we sent out just over 100 notices this month rather than the usual 300-400). Secondly, the immediacy of the disconnect notices brought a larger than normal response. Throughout our entire system, only about a dozen members (of the 100 who got disconnect notices) had not paid or made payment arrangements prior to disconnect day. The number of actual disconnections due to non payment amounted to three, down considerably from the 29 members who had their meters pulled in July.
While a lot of credit for this month’s success goes to the OPALCO employees who work with our members who are having financial difficulties, I think the significant difference is the member’s attitude toward the immediacy of the notice. We are going to continue with this new practice for awhile to see if it really does decrease the number of disconnect notices and, ultimately, disconnects.
Let me leave you with one piece of advice. If you are having problems paying your electric bill, please call us. The office staff has a lot more flexibility to work with you before you are disconnected. Once you have been disconnected for nonpayment, our ability to work with you for a mutually agreeable payment arrangement becomes a lot more limited. So call us before it happens. We consider it a personal failure of OPALCO every time we disconnect someone. Help us work with you.
Doug Bechtel
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