Wade Rahn

Historically we have received many questions annually about Lease Payments, which are a component on the monthly bill for electric accounts in the communities of Clarks, Osceola, Shelby, or Silver Creek. The Lease Payment collects 12% of electric, demand, and customer charges on the monthly billing and is returned quarterly to the town where the electric account is located.

The Lease Payment is a component of our Professional Retail Operations Agreement (PRO) with the City or Village who owns the electric distribution system for the community. The PRO Agreement allows PCRPPD to operate the community’s electric system. Per the PRO Agreement, PCRPPD improves and maintains the electric distribution system at no cost to the City or Village. PCRPPD returns 100% of the lease payments collected from PCRPPD customers to the City or Village to be used at their discretion. Lease payment rates are set by the City or Village.

Also, per State Statute, PCRPPD collects a 5% Gross Revenue Tax that is returned to the county in lieu of a property tax on the electric distribution system for the City or Village. The 5% Gross Revenue Tax is calculated from the total of the electric, demand, customer, and lease agreement charges. This tax is paid annually to the County Treasurer and redistributed proportionally based on the mill levy of the taxing authorities.

In 2023, the average percentage of time any Polk County RPPD household had lower was 99.99%. When your power goes out, it may seem like hours before it comes back on, but 99.99% availability amounts to approximately 52 minutes a year without power. But still, during an outage you may wonder what is taking so long?!

Whether you report an outage by text, phoning the office, or using our SmartHub app, our crew is ready to leap into action to get your power restored as quickly as possible. 24x7x365 we have linemen on-call to respond to your plea for power.

First things first, if after hours, the two on-call linemen must drive back to the office to pick up their service truck and equipment and begin the trek to the outage area. If numerous calls come in, our Outage Management System helps to pinpoint the issue by predicting the system protective device that may have tripped.

The linemen will then patrol the line to find what caused the protective device to trip. It may be a blown lightning arrestor, a broken pole, or a less than fortunate squirrel. Patrolling the line takes time, especially in the dark in the middle of a storm. But patrolling the line is crucial to ensure the safety of the linemen and the system before resetting the protective device.

Once the problem is found, the linemen plan their repairs which may involve de-energizing additional line so repairs can be made safely. Sometimes the on-call crew may need to call for additional help or materials if the repairs are extensive.

Each situation is unique with varying factors affecting outage restoration time. But rest assured, the linemen are working as quickly as safely possible to get your power back on. If you are interested in learning more or have questions, please give us a call.

PCRPPD Historical Reliability