The City of West Plains Electric Department will celebrate Public Power Week, October 4-10, along with 79 hometown electric utility members of the Missouri Public Utility Alliance and more than 2,000 other community-owned, not-for-profit electric hometown utilities that collectively provide electricity to 49 million Americans.
“We’ve certainly seen our share of challenges this year,” said Public Works Director Jeff Hanshaw. “But we continue to pull together with a common goal: keeping West Plains powered,” said Hanshaw. “We’ve proven that, despite the challenges, we power on.”
“We take pride in serving our friends and neighbors with electric, one of our most essential needs for our hometown,” said Hanshaw. “We proudly serve power to 5,143 residential customers and 1,288 commercial and industrial customers.”
During Public Power Week, electric linemen will begin installation for a new Community Accessible Broadband (CAB) Project. This project was based on a critical need for the community to have accessible internet for students and any telehealth needs due to Covid-19.
Citizens will have the ability to access free public Wi-Fi in 10 designated parks throughout the City as a free service from the City of West Plains. Electric linemen will begin installing fiber and towers around the town in the coming weeks with the project completion to be by the end of 2020.
The following locations have been identified for free public Wi-Fi: North Terra Golf Course parking lot, Lincoln Park, Gene Jones Park, Georgia White Walking Park, Carmical Field/Park, Peoples Park, Lofton Park, Don Warden Park (Community Gardens), Skate Park, and Wayhaven Park.
Groundbreaking will begin on the West Plains Solar Farm in the spring of 2021. This will be located on 30 acres of land at the old landfill site north of town. It will be an 8 megawatt solar farm and produce enough energy to power over 1,440 homes.
Today, the City of West Plains Electric Department has 10 employees. There are over eight miles of transmission line, six distribution substations, over 175 miles of overhead lines, nearly 100 miles of underground lines, 4,737 power poles, 1,851 streetlights, 1,114 transformers, and 536 pad mount transformers.
The City of West Plains appreciates all our customers and we celebrate them for making us a successful public power utility.
