Horry Electric Cooperative’s W.I.R.E. (Women Involved in Rural Electrification) chapter is now accepting applications for the 2021 W.I.R.E. scholarship.
Applicants must be an active member of Horry Electric or dependent of an active member. The applicant must also live in the home with the member.
The $1,500 scholarship is for one academic year for a freshman entering Coastal Carolina University or Horry-Georgetown Technical College. $750 will be awarded for the fall semester and the additional $750 will be awarded contingent upon meeting the G.P.R. requirement.
The deadline to apply is Monday, March 1, 2021. All applications must be received by 12 p.m. (noon). All applications received after Monday, March 1, 2021 are NOT eligible.
Applications are being sent to all Horry County high schools and will be available through the guidance counselor.
Cover of November/December edition of South Carolina Living.
The November/December 2020 edition of South Carolina Living magazine has been uploaded to horryelectric.com! The next edition of the magazine won’t hit mailboxes until January 2021.
The main part of South Carolina Living magazine, which can also be found online includes the usual recipes, plus a few feature articles about interesting people and places in our own state!
The November/December 2020 edition has six pages dedicated to local news about your co-op. Highlights include:
CEO Column– Virtual Annual Meeting recap with photos; Looking forward to 2021; Happy Holidays from Horry Electric!
How to Become a Trustee: Qualifications, Nominations, and Election of Trustees; 2021 Virtual Business Annual Meeting timeline.
Bright Ideas: Co-op awards 11 teachers $10,000 in grants.
The main part of South Carolina Living magazine, which can also be found online includes the usual recipes, plus a few feature articles about interesting people and places in our own state!
The October 2020 edition has six pages dedicated to local news about your co-op. Highlights include:
CEO Column– October is National Co-op Month, but it’s also for awareness.
Trustee feature: Co-op board members retires after serving 42 years.
The Cooperative Spirit: Horry Electric sends crews to aid in Hurricane Laura restoration.
Virtual Youth Experience Youth Ambassador: Myrtle Beach’s Hannah Zincone named Youth Ambassador following VYE; Local students win $500 in podcast competition.
Various co-op news: Dale’s Dynamic Defenses for National Cybersecurity Awareness Month; We wear pink in October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Picture of the special Annual Meeting wrap found on the outside of the September edition of South Carolina Living.
The September 2020 edition of South Carolina Living magazine has been uploaded to horryelectric.com! This edition is the OFFICIAL NOTICE OF ANNUAL MEETING. It has a special Annual Meeting wrap with more important details!
The magazine will be delivered to ALL Horry Electric members on file as of August 31. It will be delivered to mailboxes soon!
The main part of South Carolina Living magazine, which can also be found online, includes the usual recipes, plus a few feature articles about interesting people and places in our own state!
The September 2020 edition has six pages dedicated to important Annual Meeting information. Information includes:
CEO Column– Important Annual Meeting information you need to know, including COVID-19 precautions.
Official Notice of Annual Meeting: Details on the Annual Meeting early Drive-Thru Registration, grand prize announcement, and registration gift.
Board of Trustees: Meet the Board of Trustees
Notice of proposed bylaw amendments: Proposed bylaw amendments; Bylaw and District Voting Referendum
Meet the candidates: Read more about the trustee candidates
Various co-op news: Facilities charge increase effective October 1; Home Energy Advisor savings
The fifth annual #WhoPowersYou Contest, in partnership with Touchstone Energy Cooperatives, is underway! Nominations are open now for Horry Electric members and employees to nominate someone in their community for national recognition. Plus, there’s a chance to win up to $,5000.
We’re looking for stories about our members making a positive impact in their community.
Click here to nominate a local hero. Submit the nominee’s name, photo and a brief description of how they are making a difference in the community.
The contest runs through midnight on October 9. The winners will be announced in October.
Horry Electric Cooperative and Touchstone Energy Cooperatives launched the #WhoPowersYou Contest in 2016. Only members of Touchstone Energy Cooperatives, including members of Horry Electric, are eligible to participate.
An independent panel of judges will select the Grand Prize, Second Place, Third Place and Honorable Mention winners!
Horry Electric’s cover of the August 2020 edition of South Carolina Living magazine.
The August 2020 edition of South Carolina Living magazine has been uploaded to horryelectric.com! It will be delivered to mailboxes of subscribing members soon!
The main part of South Carolina Living magazine, which can also be found online includes the usual recipes, plus a few feature articles about interesting people and places in our own state!
The August 2020 edition has six pages dedicated to local news about your co-op. Highlights include:
CEO Column– New Annual Meeting plans for 2020; what you need to know to prepare.
Various co-op news: Bright Ideas grant application deadline extended; Electrical safety tips for hunters.
Fun for kids: Power restoration fill-in-the-blank
Virtual Youth Experience reflections: Read how the first ever Virtual Youth Experience impacted local students after summer trips were cancelled due to COVID-19.
Bill payment options: Learn more about our free Bank Draft program; Advance Pay
It started back in April. Two power outages, same cause – a snake. That’s right, a snake is to blame for putting hundreds, even thousands, of members in the dark.
Back on April 14, over 850 members served out of the Barefoot substation were left without power. Horry Electric’s linemen investigated and found the snake inside the substation on a regulator. A regulator is what helps maintain a constant voltage level along the power lines. The regulator does exactly as it sounds – it regulates the voltage as the amount of load on the lines change.
Fast forward to April 23. Nearly 2,100 members lost power out of the Lake Ridge substation. Why? A snake was able to get into a tricky spot and caused the entire substation to go out.
Now, fast forward to June 29. Another 2,500 members woke up to no power all because of a snake. These are considered major outages, but we have seen a couple of smaller outages where a snake is down the line somewhere.
Some of you have asked why an animal, such as a snake, is able to cause a power outage. Here’s why: “Whether it be a tree limb, a bird, a squirrel or snake… anything that has the ability to conduct electricity has the potential to short-circuit the electrical flow,” explains Jeff Spivey, Horry Electric’s substation and apparatus supervisor.
It’s summertime, which means the animals are out and about and sometimes they get into places, like substations, and cause outages. The tricky thing about snakes are their long bodies and until it’s removed, there’s going to be an outage rather than a power blink like a squirrel causes.
Animals on the lines vs. in the substation
Basically, it works the same – a short-circuit is a short-circuit. “The only big difference is the amount of fault current in the substation. The fault current is at a higher value than somewhere down the line,” says Spivey. “It will short-circuit, but it will be more violent at the substation.”
The way the system is designed to work is wherever an animal comes in contact, there’s a device up the line that’s going to clear the fault. For example, a snake gets on a transformer on a power pole that might serve three houses; the up-line sectionalizing device, which is the transformer fuse, will clear the fault.
“It’s kind of like a domino effect… wherever that up-line device falls in the sequence, from that point down is going to be out of power. It keeps outages down, but it’s also a safety factor, too,” Spivey explains.
This, of course, differs in the substation because you’re at the source of the power transformer. “At Lake Ridge, the up-line device was a circuit switcher, which feeds the power transformer, which feeds over 2,000 people,” Spivey said. “The circuit switcher did what it was supposed to do. As a result, everyone went out because the problem was reserved right within that substation.”
To backfeed or not to backfeed?
Once crews are able to diagnose the outage problem in the field, the next question they have to ask is if it makes sense to backfeed?
When it comes to an outage down the lines, sometimes crews are able to backfeed by opening one or two switches. It’s not that easy when it comes to an entire substation.
“It’s a judgment call when you’re out there,” Spivey says. Another major thing to consider is the load on the system. “You might be able to backfeed in January, February or March, but June, July and August… the loads may be too great.”
Working to prevent animal-caused outages
Horry Electric’s Supervisory Engineer Kevin Jordan pulled the outage records for the last 10 years. “The records indicate, including substation and downline outages, we’ve had nearly 60 outages caused by snakes since 2010,” Jordan says.
Some of you might ask why this is becoming more common. The answer is simple: snakes are after food. Crews are constantly on the lookout for bird nests. Birds come around looking for other critters, so we use an environmentally friendly granular deterrent, to run away critters, which in turn, moves the snakes away.
“There is still an act of nature that we can’t prevent. In some of the latest episodes, we believe a bird had the snake in its mouth and dropped it from the sky, right where he didn’t need to be,” said Mitchell Benton, supervisory engineer. “Rest assured, crews are always looking at ways to protect animals and critters, while at the same time, assuring we deliver safe, reliable and affordable electricity to our members’ homes and businesses.”
Restoration times will vary
There is no way to predict an outage restoration time, unfortunately. Whether it’s a storm related outage, an animal related outage, or an equipment failure, outage times are going to vary. Restoration times vary based on where the problem is, especially if it happens in a substation.
It’s important to remember that conditions change based on Mother Nature. Members and our crews also have to remember “Scenarios change, situations change, the environment changes… so you have to have to make wise decisions based upon all of that data put together. As long as you can do that, that makes power restoration go a whole lot easier and a lot more fluent, and naturally, it’s safer and more efficient,” Spivey says.
Rest assured, our crews will work as quickly and safely as possible to make sure your power is restored. As we always say: Your patience and prayers are appreciated.
Horry County Council passed a face mask ordinance on Friday, July 3. In order to effectively keep our members and employees safe, Horry Electric will be requiring members to wear a mask to enter the Conway or Socastee office buildings starting Monday, July 6.
The ordinance will remain in effect for 60 days from the July 3 start, unless terminated sooner by the county council.
We appreciate your patience and understanding. We will get through this together.
As stated on the poster from Horry County, visit horrycounty.org for more information.
Call the DHEC Care Line at 1-855-472-3432 with questions about COVID-19.
Horry Electric’s cover of the July 2020 edition of South Carolina Living magazine.
The July 2020 edition of South Carolina Living magazine has been uploaded to horryelectric.com! It will be delivered to mailboxes of subscribing members soon!
The main part of South Carolina Living magazine, which can also be found online includes the usual recipes, plus a few feature articles about interesting people and places in our own state!
The July 2020 edition has six pages dedicated to local news about your co-op. Highlights include:
CEO Column– Coronavirus response continues; Hurricane season is here – how you can stay ahead and prepare.
Co-op born and raised: Horry Electric’s Penelope Hinson has retires after 31 years of service. Read about her journey and the legacy she leaves behind.
Various co-op news: We’re always CONNECTED; Bright Ideas grant application deadline extended.
Answering the call: Take a look into one of our departments, consisting of four men who do it all – the servicemen.
Generating your own power?: Generators are a high concern during storms, but especially during hurricane season. What you need to know and how you can help keep our crews safe.
