Diggers, dozers and boom trucks

New Hori­zon Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive pro­vides essen­tial equip­ment for YEC, Upstate co-ops. To stand before them, one can be both intim­i­dat­ed and impressed. They are huge and often loud. They trav­el to remote loca­tions, reach tow­er­ing heights and are oper­at­ed by skilled, coura­geous men. They per­form chal­leng­ing and often dan­ger­ous tasks when­ev­er called upon.

But for all their horse­pow­er and sophis­ti­cat­ed machin­ery, the spe­cial­ized equip­ment used by New Hori­zon Elec­tric has a sim­ple mis­sion, accord­ing to York Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive CEO Paul Basha.

“Can New Hori­zon do some­thing more effi­cient­ly or cost-effec­tive than we can do our­selves?” says Basha. “That’s the crux of why they exist.”

New Hori­zon Elec­tric came into exis­tence in 1998 to pro­vide trans­mis­sion to its five-mem­ber dis­tri­b­u­tion elec­tric coop­er­a­tives in South Car­oli­na’s Upstate—York Elec­tric, Broad Riv­er Elec­tric, Lau­rens Elec­tric, Lit­tle Riv­er Elec­tric and Blue Ridge Elec­tric. As the indus­try and intrastate part­ner­ships changed over the last 23 years, so has the ser­vices of New Hori­zon Elec­tric.

Vehicle propelled by two endless metal belts.
[/me­dia-cred­it] A New Hori­zon Elec­tric track vehi­cle replaces a bro­ken pole in some of York Elec­tric’s rough­est ter­rain.

The Lau­rens-based coop­er­a­tive no longer owns trans­mis­sion lines, but instead pro­vides main­te­nance for York Elec­tric and the oth­er mem­ber coop­er­a­tive’s infrastructure—hence the need for track vehi­cles, 80-foot dig­ger der­ricks and 125-foot knuck­le boom buck­et trucks. That work is most­ly done hot, or with­out inter­rupt­ing the flow of elec­tric­i­ty trav­el­ing over those lines to York Elec­tric and the oth­er mem­ber coop­er­a­tives.

New Hori­zon Elec­tric also pro­vides con­struc­tion, test­ing, inspec­tions and main­te­nance for the dozens of sub­sta­tions serv­ing elec­tric coop­er­a­tive mem­bers in the Upstate. It also man­ages the coop­er­a­tives’ super­vi­so­ry con­trol and data acqui­si­tion (SCADA) sys­tems and oth­er net­work mon­i­tor­ing, design and pro­tec­tion.

“As far as I can tell, New Hori­zon is the only enti­ty like it in the coun­try,” says CEO Bob­by Smith. “We’re con­sid­ered a G&T (gen­er­a­tion and trans­mis­sion), but we don’t have any ener­gy sales. What we do puts us in a whole dif­fer­ent buck­et.”

In rela­tion to out­age restora­tion, New Hori­zon Elec­tric most often works on trans­mis­sion lines. How­ev­er, when restora­tion or main­te­nance needs go beyond stan­dard dis­tri­b­u­tion line work, the New Hori­zon crews and equip­ment are dis­patched.

Two crew members atop full-extended bucket trucks.
[/me­dia-cred­it] Buck­et trucks that reach heights of 100 to 125 feet were need­ed for York Elec­tric’s Cataw­ba Riv­er cross­ing project in August.

In August, the crews were work­ing on York Elec­tric’s sys­tem, run­ning a line across the Cataw­ba Riv­er near the River­walk Tres­tle in Rock Hill. Smith says they even used a drone to fly a pull line approx­i­mate­ly 1,040 feet across the riv­er.

“That was about a two and a half week-long ven­ture with our crews there with three steel pole struc­tures on each side of the riv­er,” recounts Smith. “It was dis­tri­b­u­tion line, but we were using trans­mis­sion size poles.”

Basha says the riv­er cross­ing project is an ide­al exam­ple of New Hori­zon meet­ing its mis­sion.

“We would have to spend mil­lions of dol­lars on equip­ment to com­plete that project, and then hard­ly ever use it again,” he says. “It makes more sense for them to do it, allow­ing for coop­er­a­tives to share the cost.”

Ear­li­er in the year, a tree des­tined to fall was threat­en­ing one of York Elec­tric’s main feed­er lines, but it was in a swampy area of its ter­ri­to­ry.

“We could­n’t get our trucks in there,” says Basha. “They brought the swamp bug­gy, cut the tree and pre­vent­ed an out­age. Pre­vent­ing an out­age is less expen­sive than respond­ing to one and it’s no incon­ve­nience to the mem­ber.”

The “swamp bug­gy” is a Prinoth GT3000 track car­ri­er with a dig­ger der­rick and buck­et. It’s not brought out as fre­quent­ly as one of the long knuck­le boom trucks that can take the New Hori­zon linework­ers to the tops of trans­mis­sion poles. But when a prob­lem is hard to get to, it’s usu­al­ly a part of the solu­tion.

“What­ev­er the need is, we fill that gap how­ev­er we can,” says Smith. “We could be out there try­ing to get the lat­est and great­est and coolest equip­ment, but the last thing we want to do is buy some mil­lion-dol­lar piece of equip­ment and it just sits down here.”

The doz­er, dig­gers and boom trucks aren’t the only cool tools that the Upstate coop­er­a­tives share. New Hori­zon Elec­tric recent­ly pur­chased two mobile sub­sta­tions. Mobile sub­sta­tions are used to restore pow­er to con­sumers when equip­ment is dam­aged at local sub­sta­tions. When sub­sta­tion main­te­nance would oth­er­wise inter­rupt ser­vice to mem­bers in the area, a mobile sub­sta­tion keeps their pow­er on. The pur­chase of one mobile sub­sta­tion would cost York Elec­tric more than $1 mil­lion. Hav­ing access to New Hori­zon’s mobile sub­sta­tion saves their mem­bers mon­ey.

“Mobile sub­sta­tions, our vehi­cles, our facilities—all of that gets shared equal­ly,” explains Smith. “We have an engi­neer­ing com­mit­tee that is rep­re­sent­ed by all five coop­er­a­tives that influ­ences the equip­ment we pur­chase. Every­one agrees to it and the costs are shared.”

Smith adds that labor costs are billed direct­ly to the coop­er­a­tives as New Hori­zon ser­vices are accessed.

“The bot­tom line is that if it was­n’t cost-effec­tive for us to have New Hori­zon, we would­n’t have it,” says Basha. “They’re there because they help us take great care of mem­bers. They’re a part of the whole equa­tion that helps us look out for you, keep rates low and the lights on.”

Mobile substation-equipped tractor trailer truck.
[/me­dia-cred­it] New Hori­zon’s newest mobile sub­sta­tion is ready to go to work for mem­bers in the Upstate. Their magnitude—both in size and impor­tance in keep­ing your lights on—is some­thing to behold.

BY JOSH P. CROTZER