Missouri Public Utility Alliance News Release
Columbia, MO, April 15, 2020
The American Public Power Association (APPA) has recognized eight Missouri municipal electric utilities with a “Certificate of Excellence” for reliable performance. The designation recognizes utilities with low incidents of power outages, a measure of utility health that attracts economic development.
This year, eight community-owned, non-profit utilities in Missouri were honored with national recognition and all are part of the Missouri Public Utility Alliance (MPUA). The MPUA-affiliated communities include Columbia, Fulton, Harrisonville, Higginsville, Macon, Marshall, Monett, and Rolla. Also earning the reliability recognition was Clarksville Connected Utilities, an MPUA member in Clarksville, AR.
“These utilities rank among the ‘best of the best’ in their reliability measures,” said Ewell Lawson, a vice-president of MPUA. “Reliability is an important measure of the quality of an electric system. Fewer power interruptions are important not only to residents, but also benefit the overall economic health of a community.”
National studies show that ‘public power’ systems like those of municipal systems already are highly reliable. “Simply put, customers of municipal utilities lose power less often, and their power is usually restored far faster than most privately-owned or cooperative systems,” Lawson said.
Federal outage records from the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA), a branch of the federal Department of Energy (DOE), bears this out. A comparison of outage records indicates that municipally-owned systems have the best service rates of all provider classes.
The MPUA member utilities were among 143 public power utilities nationwide to earn the APPA recognition for 2019. Utilities recognized maintain reliability data using APPA’s web-based subscription service with the data benchmarked against national EIA statistics. Utilities placing in the top quartile of reliability nationwide as measured against the EIA’s data received the Certificate of Excellence.