The Cookeville Energy Department is converting overhead power lines to underground infrastructure along South Maple Avenue to improve service reliability and neighborhood aesthetics.
Cookeville Energy Department Director Carl Haney said the project involves digging trenches for conduits and installing new transformers to feed residential homes. Haney said the department selects specific areas for these upgrades based on the age of existing facilities and the frequency of power outages caused by trees.
“If you’ve been up and down South Maple, there’s a lot of tree canopy, we have outages during storms and stuff out there, so we started converting it to underground,” Haney said. “Couple years ago we did Sherwood subdivision out off 12th street, we converted that one to underground and obviously since then, no outages.”
Haney said the department is currently in the final stages of the project and has begun removing the old overhead lines.
Haney said while large-scale conversions can take up to a year to complete.
“Well, obviously you know from an aesthetics it looks better that you’re driving down the road and those overhead lines are gone,” Haney said. “But our major thing is outages, so storms come through, you know, the risk of a tree falling or limbs falling out and causing either that area or even adjacent areas that would feed beyond that, they should see less outages during those times of storms and such.”
Haney said the department was able to complete the transition to underground power without interrupting utility services for local residents. Haney said any previous traffic diversions required for the construction phase have also concluded.
“Like I said, we obviously track outages as they happen in Cookeville whether those are tree issue outages or just during storms but also in some of the aging areas just like out off in Eastgate or Briargate that had some really old underground out there that was probably 50 years old so we were seeing some of that stuff some of our equipment out there fail so we went in there and upgraded it,” Haney said. “So we look at that also, it’s not just storms, we also look at the aging infrastructure and see where that has to happen.”
Haney said the department is currently finishing a similar infrastructure upgrade in the Hillsdale area to replace aging underground equipment. Haney said officials will evaluate outage data and infrastructure age over the next few months to determine the next location for system improvements.