Statewide Iowa — MidAmerican Energy, the company that provides electrical and natural gas service to many area communities is utilizing technology to help them locate the source of electrical outages.
MidAmerican will get instant reports of power outages from new electronic sensors being attached to Iowa power lines.
That’s Geoff Greenwood, a spokesman for MidAmerican Energy. Greenwood says it can take hours for utility workers to physically inspect lines and find the source of an outage. The electronic sensors transmit information about power outages to a control center located in Des Moines that monitors all of MidAmerican’s power grid in Iowa.
The sensors are called “remote fault indicators.” Greenwood says the devices are able to identify faults in the flow of electricity.
Sensors have already been installed in rural areas, as well as in the cities of Council Bluffs, Des Moines, Fort Dodge, Iowa City, Sioux City, the Quad Cities and Waterloo. The devices can be attached to lines that are above or below ground.
MidAmerican provides electric service to 770-thousand customers in Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and South Dakota.
