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News Release > Entergy Arkansas Completes Corning Maintenance, Upgrades for Greater Reliability
Entergy Arkansas Completes Corning Maintenance, Upgrades for Greater Reliability
12/17/2020
“We routinely seek opportunities to enhance reliability for our customers,” said Entergy Arkansas Customer Service Manager Matt Faries. “Our design engineers identified 1.3 miles of circuit along Highway 67 and in the area of the Corning High School for preventative maintenance, equipment upgrades, and increased spacing.”
Line crews worked the project over a period of about eight weeks, although progress was paused at times as crews were temporarily working to restore power in the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricanes Laura and Delta.
The work was part of Entergy’s FOCUS reliability improvement program. FOCUS is an acronym for an initiative where employees “Find the device, Observe the conditions, Collect the damage, Understand the value and Succeed with results.”
Through the program, $28 million dollars have been invested in the system since 2015 to prevent outages, shorten the duration of outages when they do occur, and improve power quality throughout the Entergy system.
The Corning project included the installation of 11 new utility poles along with upgrading or replacing dozens of insulators, switches, and lightning arrestors to fortify the system and make it more resistant to storms. Switches were installed to sectionalize the electrical system at critical locations, allowing fewer customers to be affected by outages when they do occur. In total, work was performed on more than 60 power poles during the project.
Putting more space between power lines helps prevent outages during storms. Ultimately, the expectation is that the upgrades performed will result in fewer outages and improved power quality in the area.
For more information about how Entergy Arkansas works to continuously maintain and upgrade the electrical system, visit www.entergyarkansas.com.
