PLWC board receives bandwidth, EV updates

A storm went through the Paragould area on May 10. The storm, with 80 mph winds, knocked down five power poles along Highway 69.

Officials said the poles, which had a double circuit on them, were replaced by PLWC and Jonesboro City Water & Light. Jonesboro CWL sent two crews to help restore the power, which was back on to customers by 10 p.m. that evening.

Officials also discussed the history of bandwidth for PLWC. Before 2011, the utility’s only provider was AT&T and officials said it was expensive.

The utility added Suddenlink in 2011 and Ritter in 2013, leading to AT&T being dropped. PLWC receives Suddenlink and Ritter services from the south of town and also added CenturyLink in the east in 2017.

Also, PLWC added the Netflix cache server in 2018. The work led to seven to eight GB of bandwidth being freed up.

The utility also reconnected with AT&T in 2018 and now has a total of 100GB of bandwidth. Officials said Wednesday that the average usage is about 40 GB and that having the extra bandwidth helps if one of the circuits goes down.

Both the Ritter and Suddenlink circuits went down after the 2020 Jonesboro tornado. However, officials said having the CenturyLink circuit, the utility did not lose internet service but it was slow.

Board members also received an update on work being done to create electric vehicle charging stations in the city.

In 2021, the utility used state grant funding to install a pair of Level 2 charging stations.

Officials said that two more Level 2 EV stations were installed this year. One of the locations is at the Paragould Farmers’ Market, while the second location is at Rotary Park.

PLWC has submitted grant applications to the state on the issue, but has not received word if they have been approved.

In other action, the board:

Approved a resolution to amend the Net-Metering and Distributed Generation Rules for the utility for this year. The rules, which were created in 2021 and revised a year later, regulate the interconnection, metering and financial consideration given to interconnecting facilities by PLWC. The amended version will address issues like capacity factors being added, monthly grid charge and cleaning up some of the definitions to stay in line with Arkansas law.

Received word that this month’s employee spotlight is Lisa Golden. Golden started in 1997 as a staff accountant and was promoted to payroll & receipts supervisor in 1998. Golden became the accounting department manager in 2021. Golden also has a bachelor’s degree in accounting and is a graduate of Paragould Leadership Class XI.

Approved the utility’s financial report for April 2023. The year-to-date overall cash flow was a negative $2.6 million, with capital asset additions of $4.3 million. Officials also said the utility has 36 days of operating cash on hand.

Received the Southwestern Power Administration Status Report for April 2023.