CWLP Earns RP3 Certification from APPA

Since April 2006, CWLP has been certified a Reliable Public Power Provider (RP3) by the American Public Power Association (APPA). CWLP is currently one of only 84 public power utilities in the United States to receive this recognition. There are more than 2,000 public power utilities serving communities across the nation.

The RP3 program measures a utility's performance in four specific areas of proficiency—reliability, safety, training and system improvements.

CWLP uses five different indices to track its reliability and demonstrates an outstanding record in each compared to other public power utilities and Illinois' investor-owned utilities. The utility also participates in mutual aid programs that enable us to call upon other electric utilities across the country for repair and restoration assistance should a catastrophic outage event occur. This availability of additional manpower and service vehicles can dramatically shorten the duration of widespread outages, ensuring our customers will be without service for the shortest possible time.

In the safety category, the utility was judged on its use of employee safety manuals, monthly employee safety meetings and refresher training courses, audio-visual training materials, certified trainers, and other safe work practices.

The CWLP Electric Division uses a variety of traditional training opportunities, including conferences and workshops, in-house training sessions, college classes, and professional development courses to ensure engineers, linemen, construction crews and all other key division personnel will remain up-to-date regarding state-of-the-art work techniques and technology.

System improvement efforts also won high marks for the utility. CWLP conducts a variety of both routine and special infrastructure improvement projects aimed at enhancing system reliability and safety. These include a major transmission line rebuild completed in 2005, an overhead-to-underground line conversion program, and an upgrade of the utility's Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system. In what will be the utility's largest system improvement ever, CWLP is nearing completion on the construction a new 200-MW power plant.

Electric Transmission & Distribution