DAYTON — AES Ohio utility crews are working through extreme heat to keep electricity flowing to regional customers. The company is balancing continuous power delivery with safety protocols designed to protect field crews from high temperatures.
To improve response times during high temperatures, AES Ohio uses a smart grid system for outage detection. The technology automatically notifies the utility when a power interruption occurs, allowing crews to locate and address issues without relying on residents to call.
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Andrew Jacobs serves as the operations manager of Metro Line Operations at AES Ohio. Jacobs explained how the smart grid technology assists utility operations when heat causes power disruptions.
“Now that we have the smart grid system where the bigger meters can be pinged, and we can understand what is out, we can specifically get a crew to that specific point, whether it be a transformer, whether it be the branch line itself, and it helps us with the restoration,” Jacobs said.
Utility crews face additional heat challenges due to the protective equipment required for electrical work. Line workers wear heavy safety gear, including rubberized gloves to protect against electric current and rubberized sleeves. “These are rubberized sleeves, and they continue to keep heat close to our body,” Jacobs said.
To manage the heat, AES Ohio requires crews to take mandatory water breaks to cool down. Workers step away from the heat by moving into shaded areas or sitting in air-conditioned vehicles.
“We’re all trying to do mandatory water breaks, so we need to be able to get the crews out of the heat and get them in a cool area, whether it be the shade or whether it be in one of the trucks with air conditioning just to take that one 15-minute mandatory break that helps us get through the day,” Jacobs said.
In addition to field operations, AES Ohio highlights the role of household preparation during power disruptions. Jacobs noted that crew positioning is only one part of managing extreme weather events.
“We try to do all our necessary precautions, things that we need to do on our end of planning and strategically trying to position crews and everything like that, but it always comes back to customers having their own plan and enacting that plan,” Jacobs said.
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