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Lions Club learns about Alpena Power Company

At the April 16 Lions Club meeting, guest speaker Ken Dragiewicz was introduced by member Audra Smith.

Dragiewicz serves as vice president of Alpena Power Company. He has degrees from ACC, MSU and SVSU.

The company had its beginnings in 1881, when George N. Fletcher founded the business. It continues to be family-owned, with Stephen H. Fletcher as the current CEO.

Alpena Power Company is an investor-owned company that is regulated by the Michigan Public Service Commission. All of their power is purchased with a long-term contract with Consumers Energy. They do not own any electrical generation — the dams were sold in 1990.

A few statistics about the company are: 32 employees; 16,300 customers; 605 miles of overhead primary lines; 65 miles of primary underground lines; and they operate in Alpena, Montmorency and Presque Isle Counties.

The Alpena Power Company does all of their own construction business, including rebuilding of the Besser substation in 2017, rebuilding of the hospital substation in 2018 and currently working on the 2nd 138 kV line from the Four Mile Substation to Gennrich.

The daily operations include trimming vegetation in a five-year cycle using an outside contractor and testing poles in a 15-year cycle.

Dragiewicz answered the question about response time when an outage occurs. Alpena Power Company has an average of 80 minutes in responding, which is lower than the rest of the state and can be attributed to their dedicated workers.

Lions were reminded that next week are elections and that the White Cane Street Sale will be June 7 and 8.

During the weekend of May 3 and 4 the Alpena Lions Club will be hosting the District Convention.

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