French Broad EMC has over five thousand miles of electrical transmission and distribution lines in place to provide electricity to more than 36,000 accounts.  Maintaining these lines is a daunting and expensive task, especially given the mountainous terrain in which we operate.  The growth of trees and other vegetation within the rights of way must be controlled so that it does not come in contact with the lines causing a short circuit which interrupts our members’ electrical service.  Right-of-way maintenance is the second largest expense we have behind wholesale power cost.

French Broad Electric also has around two hundred miles of fiber optic cable now in place.  Our fiber optic system continues to grow as we expand it to serve the outlying schools in Madison, Mitchell, and Yancey counties.  These expansions are part of the ongoing effort by the state of North Carolina to extend high speed connectivity to every rural school in the state.  These fiber lines also provide high speed connectivity to many businesses, internet service providers, county government buildings, and Mars Hill College. 

In addition, these fiber optic lines provide French Broad Electric a valuable communications link to our substations, district offices, as well as other equipment out in the field.  We are able to gather real time data from our substations that notifies us anytime there is an interruption in electrical service.  We also use these lines to collect our automated meter reading data around the clock for billing purposes as well as outage management.  Our fiber optic network has become a multifunctional tool that furnishes many important services to French Broad EMC and its members. 

The fiber optic cable we use is very durable and dependable but as they say “it’s not bullet proof.”  Trees and other vegetation do not affect its performance like they do our electric lines.  However, as we have found on a few occasions, it cannot withstand the force of a trackhoe boom or a raised dump truck bed.  Anytime we have an outage on our fiber optic lines, we know it will take several hours and quite often more than a day to make the necessary repairs.  When we repair electric lines, we simply put the broken wire back together with an automatic sleeve, hang the wire back on the pole, and re-energize the circuit.  A fiber optic cable is much different in that it has numerous individual fibers which must be spliced back individually.  In addition, each end of the cable must be prepared and placed in a weatherproof container prior to splicing.  It takes about an hour just to do twelve splices, and many of our cables have seventy-two fibers.  On top of that, we usually have to insert a small piece of cable to lengthen the line, requiring a second splice point.  These repairs are very time consuming and expensive.

We recently experienced an outage due to a gunshot.  Someone decided to shoot a bee’s nest located near one of our fiber optic lines.  The bullet damaged part of the cable along with one of the electrical insulators, interrupting service to our customers in that particular area.  Our crew spent the entire day locating and repairing this damage. 

I would like to remind everyone how much damage and associated costs we incur due to a simple gunshot.  Often we probably don’t think about the consequences of shooting something of this nature, but please refrain from the temptation of shooting at power lines and poles as well as other utility lines and devices. 

Thank You,

Jeff Loven
Email: jeff.loven@frenchbroademc.com


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