Safety & Reliability

Safety & Reliability

Used respon­si­bly, the reli­able elec­tric pow­er York Elec­tric pro­vides makes count­less tasks eas­i­er and more con­ve­nient in the home and work­place. One way to make sure you use elec­tric­i­ty respon­si­bly is to be informed about elec­tri­cal safe­ty. This sec­tion offers safe­ty tips for both indoor and out­door activ­i­ties. And if you have any ques­tions about elec­tri­cal safe­ty, please con­tact us.

SAFETY VIDEOS

INDOOR SAFETY

OUTDOOR SAFETY

WATER DANGER

OVERHEAD LINES

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SAFETY DEMONSTRATIONS

OVERLOADS

OUTLETS

SHOCK EMERGENCIES

GENERATOR SAFETY

Ener­gy Glos­sary

CALL 811 BEFORE YOU DIG

If you ‘see red,’ buried power lines are present!

MORE INFORMATION

Recent Safety Concerns

A padlock on a keyboard, illuminated by red and green light, symbolizes cybersecurity and data protection.

Cybersecurity

You have fun­ny GIFs to find, emails to ignore, pants to buy. But we all know that per­ils lurk in the dark cor­ners of the web, and, even when you try to main­tain good habits, you can encounter packs of cyber­crim­i­nals and mali­cious soft­ware. We have a sur­vival guide for when you think you down­loaded a virus, sus­pect an online account has been hacked, or a cyber­crim­i­nal is threat­en­ing you.
Read the Guide
A tall telecommunications tower stands against a backdrop of overcast, cloudy sky. The structure appears isolated, with various antennas attached.

Electromagnetic Fields & Radio Frequency

Some mem­bers have expressed con­cerns about elec­tro­mag­net­ic fields, also known as radio fre­quen­cy, that could be a result of the trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of elec­tric­i­ty along pow­er lines. We encour­age our mem­bers to com­plete their own research on this mat­ter. How­ev­er, the fre­quen­cies cre­at­ed from pow­er lines are very low on the elec­tro­mag­net­ic spec­trum.
Get the Facts

Get More Safety Guidance for Members of All Ages

SAFEELECTRICITY.ORG

Careful Around Electrical Substations

Substation safety graphic, text follows
  • Teach young­sters to stay away from elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tion fences – they are NOT for climb­ing.
  • Con­tact us if you see a sub­sta­tion fence or trans­former cab­i­net that is open or van­dal­ized.
  • Nev­er fly kites or drones near sub­sta­tions.
  • Nev­er release metal­lic bal­loons near sub­sta­tions, which can cause pow­er out­ages when they con­tact pow­er lines.

Safety Downloads

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[PDF] Safe at Home Brochure

1.00 MB

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[PDF] Lineworker Safety Coloring Sheet

1.54 MB

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[PDF] How Lineworkers Stay Safe

2 MB

How We Provide Reliable Service

Since 1941, we’ve been com­mit­ted to keep­ing the lights on, rain or shine. We also want you to know your water will be hot, your phones will be charged, and, most impor­tant­ly, the elec­tric­i­ty you use is safe. We spend much of our cus­tomer rela­tions time and ener­gy on com­mu­ni­cat­ing with you when there are hic­cups in ser­vice and, in turn, open­ing up your lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to us via as many avenues as pos­si­ble. But it is equal­ly impor­tant for all our mem­ber-own­ers to be able to trust in our reli­a­bil­i­ty and know what we’re doing – and improv­ing – in our sys­tems to keep your life run­ning smooth­ly.

A person in a bucket truck repairs power lines amidst tall trees, with utility vehicles parked nearby on a sunny day.

Right of Way

Right-of-way (ROW) main­te­nance involves clear­ing limbs and trees away from pow­er lines.

Utility workers repair power lines in a forested area using a bucket truck, surrounded by trees and clear skies.

Maintenance Schedule

We main­tain right-of-way on a five-year rota­tion to be sure we deliv­er reli­able ser­vice.

A small sapling with bright green leaves grows from soil on a reflective surface, isolated against a plain white background.

Trade a Tree

The Trade a Tree pro­gram helps replace trees cut down for right of way main­te­nance.

The image shows a close-up of an analog electricity meter with dials, measuring kilowatt-hours for energy consumption on a building exterior.

Metering

New tech­nol­o­gy pre­pares York Elec­tric for the pow­er industry’s tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments.

How We Maintain Our Infrastructure

New Hori­zon is owned by the five upstate South Car­oli­na coop­er­a­tives. For many of our sub­sta­tions, they own and main­tain the high side, or where trans­mis­sion lines enter the sta­tion. New Hori­zon also works with YEC to help us main­tain the equip­ment inside the sub­sta­tion, increas­ing reli­a­bil­i­ty for mem­bers. Here’s a sum­ma­ry of our com­bined efforts to keep every­thing in opti­mum work­ing order:

UTILITY POLES & POWER LINES

UTILITY POLES & POWER LINES

Con­tin­ued main­te­nance on the lines and poles deliv­er­ing pow­er to your home is nec­es­sary to pre­serve our high stan­dards of ser­vice, and we want you to have peace-of-mind that YEC is dili­gent about this upkeep.

SUBSTATION MAINTENANCE

YEC sub­sta­tions and lines require main­te­nance to reli­ably deliv­er pow­er – includ­ing replac­ing out­dat­ed equip­ment where high volt­age lines enter the sub­sta­tion, adding trans­form­ers to increase capac­i­ty for pop­u­la­tion growth, and upgrades in tech­nol­o­gy to iso­late out­ages and improve restora­tion times.

VOLTAGE REGULATORS

A volt­age reg­u­la­tor auto­mat­i­cal­ly main­tains a con­stant volt­age lev­el and is impor­tant in pro­vid­ing steady reli­a­bil­i­ty. We uti­lize super­vi­so­ry con­trol and data acqui­si­tion to mon­i­tor sub­sta­tion reg­u­la­tors. When we see an alarm, we can address the sit­u­a­tion and iden­ti­fy poten­tial prob­lems with­in two days. New Hori­zon com­pletes a visu­al inspec­tion on all reg­u­la­tors each month, fol­lowed by YEC’s quar­ter­ly visu­al inspec­tions. All sub­sta­tion reg­u­la­tors are on a 5‑year rota­tion for main­te­nance and oil checks, while down line reg­u­la­tors are inspect­ed every year and the oil is test­ed on a 5‑year rota­tion.

INFRARED SCANNING

New Hori­zon Elec­tric uses infrared tech­nol­o­gy to test for poten­tial prob­lems each sum­mer, when the load is the high­est, e.g. when most peo­ple are using the most pow­er, to ensure it is han­dled well.

York Electric’s Operations Center

From our great­ly-improved oper­a­tions cen­ter, we can use tech­nol­o­gy to locate out­ages, dis­patch our linework­ers, focus on safe­ty and orga­ni­za­tion, and com­mu­ni­cate impor­tant infor­ma­tion to our employ­ees in the field. Although we might not be out­side, our con­nec­tions and com­mu­ni­ca­tions to employ­ees work­ing across our ser­vice ter­ri­to­ry puts us in the trench­es with them when it mat­ters most.

Dispatchers Mary Brown (left) and Holly Williams work together to set up the space to be efficient for day to day operations.

Reliability Metrics

While sta­tis­tics and num­bers are no com­fort when the pow­er is out, we do keep track of all the details on out­ages. YEC uses these met­rics to deter­mine where we fail, where we suc­ceed, and where we can improve (or have improved) so we can ulti­mate­ly pro­vide the best ser­vice pos­si­ble. These are the mea­sure­ments we employ:

  • SAIDI – Sys­tem Aver­age Inter­rup­tion Dura­tion Index: The total amount of time the aver­age mem­ber is with­out pow­er dur­ing the year in min­utes.
  • SAIFI — Sys­tem Aver­age Inter­rup­tion Fre­quen­cy Index: The num­ber of times the aver­age mem­ber is with­out pow­er dur­ing the year in min­utes.
  • CAIDI — Cus­tomer Aver­age Inter­rup­tion Dura­tion Index: The aver­age dura­tion of the out­age for the aver­age mem­ber dur­ing the year in min­utes.
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Source: U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (EIA)

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