Aging Power Pole Replacement

More than 45,000 power poles populate the landscape of Central Electric’s 5,300 square-mile service area. Some of these poles were originally installed when the co-op was established in 1941. In 2017 CEC began a program of proactively replacing 400 poles each year. With the number of poles on the system, we consider this a permanent program because once we’ve replaced today’s newest poles many years from now, it will be time to start over again.  These pole replacements are in addition to ones changed out each year due to damage from vehicle accidents, severe weather conditions or old age. These usually happen when the pole damage causes an outage.

Read more about the program in this October 2017 article in Ruralite (PDF).