Hey, I have Brandon White here with me today. He's a alignment of the local co Op. One of the things that I think is really cool about some of the people that we bring on here, well, all the people that I want to be here on our show are people that have contributed greatly to the better good of humanity. And that commitment is not just like, hey, lip service. You actually go out and do it every day. So I appreciate you coming on and talk about what y'all do and how y'all do it. And so let's just start off with like where you grew up and just kind of a little background of how you got to the point where you're in the seat you're in. All right, So I grew up in Nelson County, kind of near Oakridge. I've got a younger brother. We were both raised by my dad. We we've been in Nelson our entire lives. I kind of grew up doing well. So I've got a landscaping business and my dad pretty much had me and my brother start my own grass at like twelve fourteen years old. And who was the best at it? You, your dad or your brother? In what aspect? So what part of it is? What part of it. Do you excel at speed or detail? I would say detail detail? Who's the speed? Who's the speeds? During My brother's probably the faster one. Yeah, but you come back and you're like this doesn't look Yeah. I'm really bad about going back. Even when I'm with my wife. She gets mad as hell because I'll go back behind her and. You're like, you missed the spot. Yeah. But yeah. I was born and raised in Nelson mode grass, worked on farms. Okay, so after you so you go to Nelson County High School? What what? Uh? Do you participate in any sports or anything? Yes? So I started playing soccer when I was probably six years old, parks and rec. I played soccer through middle school. I played varsity through high school. I graduated in two thousand and nine. Went to pharam College in Franklin for a year, played soccer there. Did they have the turf field there? No? It was grass. I was gonna say, how what's it? Have you ever played soccer on turfield? Yeah? At Amherst. How do you like it? It's it's hot and when it's dry, when it's wet, it's like a slipping slide. Okay, so there's no redeeming qualities for playing soccer on turf. Now even does the ball bounce true or not real skips? It's skips. Yeah, it's because it's moving so fast. Yeah. So you grew up, went to Nelson, went to pharam College. How did you end up going into a co op working on an electric for electric company? So I went to Fareham to play soccer and study criminal justice, and after my first year I kind of realized, between the price point of it and my interest in life at the time, that college was not for me. Came back to Nelson and I was working at a garage that I worked at before I went to Phareham, and you know, I enjoyed it, but it just it didn't pay all that well. I mean probably I wouldn't have, you know, licensed mechanic or anything. But I was probably making like eight dollars an hour. And someone had mentioned the job at the co op and I didn't even know. I was one of those people that you know, you turn on the lights, you turn off the lights, you don't really think about where it comes from. And they were like, we have this job, and uh, we'll train you, we'll get you your CDL, we'll start you off at like sixteen dollars an hour, and you're like, well that's double what I'm about, double the pay. It's a no brainer. I'll see what it's about. And they're like, as long as you don't mind being outside working hard, you'll fit in just Fineka. So I applied and did the skills test and everything and ended up getting hired. And it was it was crazy to me the people that I knew that worked there, that I had no idea what they did before. So what kind of skills test did they have? We did? We had one hundred and ten foot bucket. They made sure that you weren't afraid of heights. So you had to go all the way up over one hundred foot. Yeah. I wouldn't have made it through that. Well. I mean, I've jumped out of helicopters and stuff, but I still I don't like heights. Yeah, we did that. They did a climbing test which I've never I'd never climbed before for and I guess it was just another height challenge. So what kind of climate? So the climbing that y'all do is a little bit different as far as poles, isn't it? Is? It? So what's what do you when you look at that, What is the most important thing that to do? I mean, other than not fall What was the most important thing about climbing a pole? Uh? I mean not falling is pretty high up right. And then so. The technique that's used, what is kind of how does that work? What part of your body? Is it your whole body that you're using or just bits and peak? I mean it's your So when we climb we use which when I first started, which was two thousand and eleven, was kind of when they implemented the fall restraints before they were free climbing, which is similar to what tree guys. It's just a rope of that loop that they just go up. Yeah, but what I use, it's uh, it fully wraps around the pole. If you fall, it catches you, so you can't fall it so far. I guess because with the other thing it'll stop you, but it's probably gonna sling you into it and then you're just gonna drag your face down the mall. Yeah, pretty much. I've heard a lot of stories about people pulling splinters out of their chest. Oh yeah, I guess. Then fall falling is a bit concern. Yeah, but but I mean falling and then But when you're training, you don't have to worry about doing like your energized stuff. But in a normal working environment, you have to be careful of your surroundings, you know, to make sure you don't get electrocuted. So you go from like not knowing anything, like okay, I flip a switch on, the light comes on. Tell us a little bit about like what you learned over time, like the progression from like a green green lineman. Is that called an apprentices or what is it called when you first go I mean green is like you know nothing, okay, which is how I started. And I think since I started, there's only been one other person that's been hired that's that was completely green. Uh. To me, an apprentice is someone who's gone through you know, basic training like we do your commercial driver's license, your CPR, first aid, your hurtman rescue, bucket rescue. So you have like a base knowledge of what. The job is, what the job is, and so you kind of start at that point. So you how long was the train that you went through to actually get out to the first job site. I mean we do on the job training. I mean we put our green guys in the field. I mean my very first day, we had a broken pole on Spruce Creek, and you know, the guys are running around grounding the lines, getting material together, and I'm just kind of looking around trying. To figure out what's going on. Yeah, I don't want to get electric cut. Yeah. And so so your first day at work, you're you're you've got a down pole. What does that look like a team of y'all go out there? How big is the team generally? I mean I think that day, I want to say it was like four or five people, But typically, like when I work call on the week nights or on the weekends, it's usually only two people. Unless it's something really big, then we might have three or four people on side. So so each one, each two man truck is a crew, I guess right, Our crew is. Three three people, but when we've run service calls, it's generally two people. All right, So explain kind of explain what the three man team concept is for. So three man team in theory, if we were to go out and change out a pole, you've got your foreman, our forman drive pickup trucks. They you know, get your orders, get your materials and do the paperwork aspect of it. So, despite what everybody thinks, you don't just magically show up at the job site and all the equipment that you need. It's not like you go to loads and pick up your stuff. You've got to plan it out. Yeah, which we do have a warehouse department, and they the newer guys we have, they've been really good about pulling our material, having our jobs ready and stuff. But on emergency situations, you don't have that. You don't. You go out there and you hope you have what you need on the truck, but if you don't, then you know you either have to come back and get it. You can improvise or wait for somebody to bring it to you. All Right, So the first day you're out there, you're talking about different people doing different things. I guess you're like, I'm not really sure what they're doing. What does that look like? Now with the experience that you have, like how would you direct somebody? Pole goes down? You got a broken pole, got hot lines on the ground, what do you do? It's you kind of have to establish, you know, your work procedures. Like we work off the basis that it's not. If it's not grounded, it's not dead. So like if I show up and a pole is down, the first thing I'm gonna do is either go back to the fuse or the opening point, make sure that it's open, like the vultage is dead. We're gonna set up and put up a set of grounds which ensures that it is dead to where you don't have to wear your rubo gloves to work it. And then you're going to start probably sorting separating wires, getting all that straight, and then we'll, you know, somebody will bring in a pole, frame the pole, will set the pole, put the wire up, ensure that everything is like it's supposed to be. If it's got like a transformer or whatever, do all those connections. Then we'll unground it, make sure that everyone's in the clear, and then we'll go back to the origination or the you know, the point where it takes off. Heat it back up. So what is it when you say heat it back up? All this terminology is new to me, so explained framing the pole. What does that look like? You that's pretty most of the time. We you'll lay it on the ground. You'll look at what you've got and you drill a bunch of holes, put material on the pole, and then we'll set it, which I try to set it with as much pre work done as possible. A lot of people will drill it in the air to make sure their angles are correct and everything, But to me, you know you can you can get it close enough beforehand. So I guess it's like everything else. If you ride down the road, you can kind of tell if somebody knew what they were doing when they set the pole. Yeah, And so what is based on what you've seen so far? Are there are a lot of technicians at what you do or there. I'm not saying it the place that you work, But when you ride down the road and you look, do you see things and you're like, uh, I wouldn't I wouldn't say that the best work. Yeah. I think it's one of those things that you develop while being in the industry that you constantly look up when you ride down the road and oka, yeah, like that looks like something I did, or that looks like shit. Yeah. So you were saying as you grew up and like when you were younger, like you spend a lot of time being very detailed. You said you were the one that was the detail, not the fast, which I would say in the type of occupation that you chose as very beneficial. How does that mentality help you in what you do day to day? I mean details are everything in the long run. I mean, you can do something and you know, I'll get it done. You can get it done quick, and you might miss a step and yeah it'll work now, but you know, five or ten years from now, it might end up being an issue where if you take that little extra attention to d tail a little bit more time, you don't have to worry about, you know, it being somebody else's problem down the road. It's like everything else that people do, like you can either do it the right first, do it right the first time, or you're probably going to be back sooner. Roson later talk about just so setting so you frame the pole and everything else. What does grounding of hotline look like? It's you you so on a on a single phase setup, which is two wires, a hot wire and a neutral, all grounded, and it is as you connect the ground to your neutral, which there's no vult voltage isn't able to come on to the line. Okay, so no matter what happens your ground. Yeah, we make sure that the line is dead open. At some point, we ground it. And then if you know, a freak instance, which my form always says, you know, like a stick or a snake or something could come across across the connection point, it'll it'll kick back to the point behind that. It won't come to where you're working. And the point behind it is the one where you were talking about that you uh interrupted or what was the term that you used, an opening point? An opening point? So the opening point is how many poles back? Is that just won't or it varies? Okay, I mean we've got we've got main opening points, We've got fuses on all almost all of our taps. I mean it could you know, if it's something close to the station, it could kick all the way back to the station. So when we talk about stations, are we talking about like those places where they have the wire around them and it's a. Big, big substation, big substation. And then when it goes out from there, what does it look like? So you have your I'm thinking about and this I this is just how my brain works. It is like the damn down in Snowden. What is that is that a substation or is that the dam should be a generation generation station? Yeah? Okay, So the most of the power that we get, where's that come from? I think we buy our power from the Midwest, and it comes in on transmission the big lines that you see, like the one hundred and two hundred foot structures, and then it goes to our substations, which are distribution stations, and then that's what steps the voltage down and then distributes it. Which most of our voltage is fourteen thousand, so it's our primary line. Send fourteen thousand like to your transformer pole, and then your transformer steps it down from fourteen four to to forty, which is what your house runs off of. It's a long way from flipping the lights, which right. Yeah, there's a lot. So obviously, I think there's been a lot of cock conversations lately about like how our power is part of the critical infrastructure, those big power stations. What are some of the components in those big you see, what do you I'm trying to think of the right terminology. So you have your distribution stations and then you have your genera what did you call that generation generation stations? Yeah, the correct but anyway, so the places where the power originates, we're so like in the Midwest, the power that you are bind. Do you have any idea what kind of power that is? I mean, I imagine a lot of coal, maybe some hydro. Okay, so the so the one down in Snowden, what is that? That's a that would be a hydro but it's a p right is that? Or is that somebody else? I don't I don't know where Snowden is to be honest, it's one at one thirty and five of one that damn no idea. You don't go that far. No, So so you and I think that's what's kind of interesting is I think people take for granted like, hey, flip a switch, it goes on, but like the what it it is really odd? Not odd, but it's just really I think it's very interesting that in Nelson County, y'all cover what Nelson County. I mean, we go between We've got three divisions. We go Amherst on the backside of Long Mountain to Green to Orange to out past Pamplin in Atmatics and I'm not sure how far towards Richmond they. Go, but y'all cover a big area. Oh yeah, our meters compared to our line mileage is it's a lot. I mean, which in like area wise, it's a lot. We've only got like thirty six thirty seven thousand meters total, but you're gonna say we've got like seventy six that seventy six hundred miles of line. So so you what you do in a rural area is a lot different than somebody alignment and like a city. Oh yeah, yeah, they could have that amount of meters in a few blocks. Okay, So it's just a different thing as far as rural and so like y'all have to learn a whole different skill set on maintaining rural lines. What are some of the equipment that y'all used to maintain that? And like, let's talk about that first and then go into kind of what y'all do for maintenance equipment wise. Yeah, so what kind of equipment on a daily basis that y'all looking at? We as far as maintenance, so we do. We've got a right away program. We've got tree cutters. A couple of times a year, we bring in a helicopter because a lot of our terrain as mountains and you can't get to it and you cannot get equipment up there. So we bring in a helicopter that side trims. We contract sprayers. They go up well, they spray everything. They do the mountains, they do the flats, but just trying to keep the lower vegetation down. We do a lot of preventative maintenance, cutting dead trees, hanging isolation points. I've the last three years I've been doing drone inspections, so that helps. It's it's faster than doing it on foot. You get a more detailed image up close versus having to set in the bucket up on every single pole. I can get you know, within two feet of each insulator, transformer cut out, get like a clear image. So when y'all when you do that kind of stuff, what are you looking for? We're looking for. We've got a We've had a lot of bad our cutouts are what hold the few? We used to get them in porcelain and they crack and they'll break, So we look for the cracks and those cracks in the porcelain insulators, broken poles, broken arms, phrasing the wire. I guess one of the things is different. I think is like for you in a rural area, somebody not they still have power, but you're you're the the infrastructure that supports that, whether it be the pole, all the other pieces, those components that are out there, you have to inspect those. It's not like somebody's gonna call you and go, hey, there's a tree laying on the line. Necessarily sometimes but not always. But but so from y'all's from what you're doing in a rural environment, like you're a lot of your stuff is definitely preventative, Like you're you're looking for a problem before it becomes a problem, as opposed to responding to it after it blows. Yeah. So for instance, yesterday I went down and picked up a chainsaw chain from a shop down at Faber and, like I said, we always were always looking and I look down line and I see an arm that's tilted, and You're like, this is a problem, and I was like, something's going on. I was like, I'm not gonna worry about it. So I take off down the road and I go, you know, a couple of miles down the road, and I'm thinking about it. I was like, I gotta I gotta see what's going on. So I pull over. So you weren't even working yesterday, right, I was, Okay, I was, but I wasn't. We had done a job somewhere else, And then I. Was, so you could have had as this is not my problem, this is not my area, not my problem. Thought crossed my mind. But they also kind of instill in us that like, if you see something, say something. So I wasn't gonna worry about it. I'm head down the road and I was thinking about it. I was like, I gotta I gotta see what it is. So I pull over, I pull out my I got a Mini four that I keep on my truck many four drone drug. Yeah, and I pull over, I put my drone in the air, fly down line, and I come up on this pole and both the braces that hold it flat, both braces are busted. What would cause that when a tree falling through it at some point, but in the area that it was, you can't see it from the road, you can't access it with a vehicle, so nobody probably knew it had happened. And the fact that it was still energized, you know fluke. Yeah, So that's that's one of those benefits of the preventative maintenances. It wasn't a problem yet, but it was going to be an issue, and when it became an issue, it would probably be difficult to find. So we're better off to fix it. So how so on something like that, how do you figure you just got to run the line? So if you so in an environment like that, you have that the why a what did you say? The energy running through that the VULTUREGEI voltage wise, so fourteen thousand to go back to two forty. If a two forty you lose a two forty, how do you track it back to where the problem is? Say, like if we have a voltage complaint at a house, yes, uh, we'll go. So if I if someone calls and says there, like I had one Wednesday on Winter Green, they said we're not getting voltage to one leg. So typically the first thing that our dispatchers will tell them is check your breakers. They check, the breakers will show up, and we'll check voltage on the top side and the bottom side of the meter base and if for one, if for instance, they've only got half the vultures are supposed to have on an overhead transformer. So like a service cab will come in above ground, We'll go back to the transformer. Check voltage to the transformer. If it's different between the transformer and the meter base, we'll start looking at the service cable. If it's different coming directly out of the transformer, then that kind of tells us something's going on with the transformer. And it's kind of the same thing for an underground. If you check it the underground can and it's not the same at the house, you know you got a bad underground wire. If it's not right coming out of the transformer, then you have a bad underground transformer. So how do you feel about above and blowground? Is everything going to blowground? Or is it kind of a combinations. It's more of a money thing. Underground's more expensive, but it's less maintenance. Personally, if I were to push one way or the other, I would push towards underground because of the maintenance aspect of it. But a lot of people do overhead because it's cheaper, and I. Guess you can see it. So if one of the other goes poorly, it doesn't It really doesn't affect how you assess it or anything else. So if you lose power in a certain part of it, so it's I think people for me, I would think if you lose power a section of power, it's it's not always easy to figure out. I mean, you've got seventy thousand line, seventy thousand lines, seventy thousand, we've got about seven thousand miles, seven thousand miles, so seven thousand miles of wire that you've got to figure out where. The problem is. Yeah, and we're really good about sectionalizing, doing isolation points, like from so we've got fuses in our station, and then on a main line, you figure you might go a mile, two miles and then there'll be another set of fuses and so on. So like our station right there at one and six. If something that line is tied to into shipment, Okay, so something happens in shipment, it's not gonna kick it all the way back to there. We've got sectionalization points, so you kind of know, like, hey, it kicked right here at Rocks River Road, so you need to start there and then work it towards the end. So how so do y'all have like something monitoring it or you just you do it based on what your consumers are experiencing, or how do you figure out where the problem is. It's a combination. Okay, if we're fortunate enough, you know, somebody will call and be like, hey, I heard a loud boom or hey I saw a tree that fell or something like that. That kind of gets us in like a general area. And then we've got these fault indicators that we hang on the line that blink whether they and they blink red or orange, and oranges seeing an activation red as an outage, so we can kind of follow those like we had a. But how long did it take y'all to get all those on the lines, And is that like as far as developing technology, how does that work? Because that seems like that's is that new or not? They've had them up for a while. We go through and maintenance some I don't know, like every five years make sure the batteries are good. And but I mean they've had them since I've been there. Okay, so it's not new technolo, they've obviously advanced in the way they work. Like we're getting some now that will send a notification to your phone saying like hey, this set's showing this. Ok So that kind of just more real time information. Yeah, but I would guess a lot of the places that you work they don't have they don't have cell service. Correct, it's getting better, but yeah, it's one thing we struggle with is our radio systems being in the mountains. I mean, it's hard to find something that you know works outside of a line of sight. So let's talk about that a little bit. So like, if you, like, there's two of you, a two main team, right, is there ever an event where two people get taken out at the same time or how do y'all plan for that to prevent that from happening? As far as let's say there's some kind of incident out there, or is it possible for both of you to get hit by electricity at the same time. I mean, that would be a shitty situation. No, no doubt about it. I would say there's always the possibility. But is there things that y'all do ahead of time to prevent that from happening? Like you have one person that's kind of out of the. Yeah, I mean I could see where so if someone were to be working on a pole and they get electrocuted, right, and the person that is supposed to save them isn't properly trained and they don't so like say I get burnt, I'm hanging on the pole. If the person that's supposed to come up there and get me doesn't think about the fact that the lines are hot, go back and make sure that they're dead. If they just run up the pole and try to get me, then there's just as good a chance we're both going to be hanging. So it's no different than what you're talking about. When you go out and find a line down they have to go back. Is that the mile between each that you've got to go back. To, Yet you've got to go back to the to the closest opening point, and you know, verify that. So opening point opening point, there's a mile between the two of them. Well, not not exactly. We can give or take. Yeah, roughly, we give it a we do it off of it's there's a lot to it. So if it's like so that's not your department, that's the engineering. I mean, yeah, engineering does kind of figure it out, but we also do some of it ourselves where it's convenient. So like if we've got a line that runs through twenty miles of open field, right, we're not going to put isolation points, you know, every because it's easier to get to it because it's less likely something's going to happen. It's easier to get to where if it breaks and goes up a mountain, we're gonna put one on this side of the mountain. We're probably gonna put one at the top of the mountain, and then one on the other side of the mountain. So it's based on terrain and everything else. Yeah, a lot of it does, all right. So I think it's a good segue into talk about what it's like because I think everybody's sitting at their house. You have a storm, snow, whatever, wind, and they're like, we're I don't see a power truck. I'm not gonna get I'm not gonna get power. How does that work for y'all? Y'all get a call, y'all get sent you. What's the furthest you've been sent from here? I've been in New Hampshire twice and what was that like up there? Old? So that you never work in really good conditions, do you? It's either really it's either hot or cold. It's never ideal. Okay, what would you say in an ideal day for me fishing? Yeah? Blue skies about seventy five. Yeah, So when you go so when you go out and do the things that you do, what does it look like when you go to New Hampshire, Like, how does the how does it go as far as the work up to get you in there. So they think they're gonna have a storm, you get put on standby or how does that normally work? Typically storms and standbys, we stay in states, so we're part of a it's Virginia, Maryland, Delaware Electric Cooperate or something. It's whatever's on your shirt and it's the three states and we're all in cahoots as far as co ops. So we'll pre plan for big storms, and you know, if somebody thinks, hey, we're gonna get absolutely hammered, they'll have us come up beforehand. Not usually, but they can't have you stage. Typically after the fact they'll send us different places. But like when we went to New Hampshire, they had a bad ice storm and it was like the day or the day after, they made sure we cover our own bases first, to make sure that you. Make sure y'all don't get hit, Like y'all's assets are all the way up in New Hampshire and the same storm hits you. Yeah, so once we're clear, then they'll start dispatching people up north, which typically we go north versus South because all your big contractors are in the South. So like when they have those storms hitting Florida and Texas and you know down there, so. You never make it to the resort areas. No, they've got tens of thousands of guys that are just waiting to make and y'all make pretty decent money on those trips. Date. Yeah, it's it's typically time and a half for us. It's time and a half from the time we leave till the time we get better. But that's not It's not easy work, though. Is it. It's it's not. It depends on where you go. I mean, I've been on trips where it's pretty laid back. You know, you do what they tell you to do, and then you end up waiting hours and hours for them to give you your next assignment. So for you on those types of things, I would think it'd be difficult too, because you don't know the area. Yeah, if they don't how does that work? If they if they don't have cell service and things like that. So I'm what I'm thinking about is a catastrophic situation that they had in Ashville, North Carolina. How do you communicat and how do you do what y'all need to do just to get power back on. So you're assigned a person they call them a bird dog, and who is supposed to know the terrain where you're at give you your orders. So a local that's supposed to know more about it. We pretty much rely off of them primarily, but then it goes back to your own knowledge as far as how electrical grids work. So we'll go down if we're in a place and they're like, hey, we need you guys to start here, fix everything beyond here, we're going to go to the origination point. We're going to make sure that it's either live or dead. If it's dead, we're going to ground it, and then we're going to start working towards the end. Okay, because there's and we and especially on storms, you have to you have to ground it thoroughly because people go into panics they start hooking up these generators and there's you know, hundreds of instances each year where guys are getting burnt because people are incorrectly hooking up generators and they're back feeding through the line. So when we say, when you say burnt, we're talking about somebody getting electrical Yeah, a industry term. You don't want to get burnt. Yeah, you don't want to get burnt. So so I guess technology is helpful, like people are starting to get generators, but that also makes what you do. I think about like electric cars and you know, firefighters and stuff that they have to deal with, which will lead to what we want to talk about at the end about first responders. But like from my standpoint, we have all these advancements, but it's still basic knowledge of almost not to that point. But I think about people settling the frontier and things like that. They had to know the land and they had to know how it worked. In a very very similar way, that's what you'all are doing. It's just using the tools that you have to maintain things and also deal with problems, and you have to have all those different skills. How do you get those skills? There are skills that you learn. Is it schools that you go to or is it just like there are a lot of different people with different life experiences, you come together as a team. This person adds this, this person adds this, I'd say it's a. Combination of all of that. Get the schools that they send us to. In the classes, I mean, they give you the book version of everything. We do a lot of on job training, which gives you like the real world version, and I think to get your Journeyman's card, it's like ten thousand hours of working time that you have to log. And then you also get your experiences, your preferences, and you know your ways of working from your older generation, and which to me ties back into when you had the girls from Liberty saying, how you know the younger generation has a lot to offer, but you know the older generation doesn't want to accept it. You get a lot from your younger generation as well. And in me being kind of in the middle, you know, I try to combine the two and then redistribute to the younger generation, like, hey, this is how we can do this. Let me put it in terms that you understand. Understand well. It kind of leads me to the next question is what are we doing in the school systems and things like that I think everybody has just like you, you went to college. What are we doing in the school systems to prepare people to do the type of work that you do, because obviously what you do is extremely critical. It's not like they're going to figure out a machine to do what you do. Yeah, I think the schools are getting better, especially Amherston Nelson, which is really only two I can speak one. But as far as pushing trade programs, it doesn't have to be specifically line work, but just blue collar jobs in general, like the workforce that can't be duplicated by technology yet. But even I think about this, I listen to a lot of stuff about AI and stuff like that, and AI. The crazy thing about that is going to require more from what you do because it requires a whole lot more energy. It is a ton of energy. So explain that from your standpoint when working in the power industry, How does AI affect what you do? And what do you think when you hear that, like why does it require so much power? That is I'm going to say, not my department, not your department, that's above me. But I know that they're getting ready to build a data center, and that data center supposed to pull more load than our entire system together. And when we say a data center, what does is that like a computer? Data center? Computer data center. That's crazy. And I don't know. I think it just goes back to the basics. I think it's am I trying to get on a biom going to because it's my show. I can do it. But like that's what bothers me is. I think all these people have these great ideas. I saw something the other day where there's a big row of coal cars just full all the way to the top of coal, and underneath it said electric car fuel. I just I think people have this. I understand emissions. If anybody's gone to a third world country where everything's diesel, you realize how poor the air quality is, but you also understand that their air quality it doesn't just stay there, it starts getting pushed all the way across. And Yeah, we can do the best job in the world about being energy efficient, clean and everything else, but like at the end of the day, we do not have enough power. Would that be accurate, especially with what they want to push to. I would say it's accurate because you you look at you can never get rid of your energy. They're never You'll never fully meet your energy need. Everybody always wants more. Yeah, and and like I said, with the data centers, it's pulling tons. You have more data centers popping up. You have your lithium mining going on because they're trying to create you know, battery backup. But like the lithium is is not great for the environment, the disposal is even worse. I mean, you've got your people that that run your electric cars, and you know it's cool that you know you can charge it go you don't have to deal with your emissions. But when you break down in the middle of nowhere, they're going to bring a generator out and charge your car. Right generally, Yeah, well, I mean I think I just think it's really easy to get inside of a box and say, Okay, pro pain is the key. This is the key. This is the key. But at the end of the day, for you, it doesn't really matter. It's just like people need energy and it's your job to provide that. Talk about some of the things that y'all do as far as proactive efforts. I think one of the things that always bothers me and our occupation is we're waiting for things to happen. Most of law enforcement is reacting to crimes and progress and things like that. Y'all spend a lot of time and effort trying to and I think we're getting better at predicting and using technology and using information. But just talk about what y'all do to prepare yourselves to make sure what is so critical, which is power, make sure people keep that even if they're like when you first started, they just flip a switch and don't appreciate people like you and what you do to make sure they have power. Yeah, my company is really good about, like we talked about preventative maintenance. You know, we're always looking for a new technology as far as outage like quick outage detection, quick restoration. We're really good about like our community outreach program, trying to educate the public as far as you know, like I said, if you see something, say something right, I mean we we're really good about that. So it all goes back to mindset as far as an individual like you can have a corporate goal, but if that doesn't get down to the person that you are, which is I really want to go home that I can deal with that tomorrow. Yeah, No, I'm going to deal with it today, you know, And always looking for things to what does preventive maintenance look like? Cutting trees trees, anything that that you know is obviously going to cause an issue. The like I said, when I fly my drone, I do I've done distribution and transmission inspections, like hundreds and hundreds of miles just flying taking pictures of poles. And that's one hundred percent preventative maintenance. That's you know, recognizing issues that are, that could be, that will be. And then we have a program we put them in that creates service orders like hey, you need to take care of this, now you need to check back or. So you're so basically you're the one in the field capturing the image. That image is downloaded to a computer. That computer then so that's using a lot of technology, but it still requires somebody that knows what they're doing. Yeah, and we so we recently we're getting into all in house UH drone operations operations and we have an outside party that's been doing it before. And the difference is, you know, I know what I'm looking for. This person they know to take the pictures, they know what you tell them, but they don't know the specifics of it. So I've gone through I've done my inspections, taking my pictures and gone back and uploaded them. While I'm in there uploading them, I'm looking at his as well, and I'm like, this is garbage, pointless. Yeah, he just took pictures. Yeah yeah, if you're if you're taking just taking pictures, it kind of defeats the purpose. So it takes somebody with a know how, which I think is a really cool thing to go into. How do you prepare yourself to be really good at flying a drone because you want a competition? Recently? Right, you're on a truck? How many trucks are you on? Just one? Just one? Yeah? Okay, if you're ever on a Actually I saw it at my work last week. Did you did you do? Did you do a selfie with it? Or no? I got there. He was the early bird. All right. So talk about the rodeo that y'all do. So we do. It's the Gaff and Go Lineworkers Rodeo. It's uh. It's always been a skills competition. It's uh. It's in Richmond, it used to be in oak Ridge. They've had one in Lynchburg before. They do climbing skills, truck operator skills. I think more recently they started doing like a grilling contest. They do a T shirt contest, and then as of two years ago, they started doing a drone operators competition, And so who competes at this anyone that's part of a cooperative, but I noticed they've also had some guys from contractors, and we've actually had people from the military as well, So anyone that's in the industry, I guess would. Be a fair So what would the military just drone operations? Do they really for their posts for their military I didn't realize that I learned something today. I'm going to learn today. So anyway, so talk about what was required of you in the drone skills portion. So the drone skills portion was they I try to give you an image, So they put five gallon buckets on top of polls and I think it was three that were horizontal and there was two that were vertical. And you take off, you fly to these buckets. And how far are the So it's not line of sight you can't see the buckets from it is it's. Line of sight there because the whole thing is probably on like an acre. But you can't do what you need to do skill wise with line of sight. You have to use that piece of equipment to get what you need to get done done. Yeah, it's fair to say, all right, so talk about what you have to do. When you get there, they put an image in the bucket and they judge you on your clarity and how centered you are on the image. And so I'll fly to one bucket, center on it, take an image, next one, next, I think it's five total, and then you come back and land and they measure you on how close you are to where you take off, versts where you land, and that's kind of how they put your score together. So you gotta fly, and it's not I mean, I don't know anybody that hadn't flown or drone. Like you got wind, you got everything else that you have to deal with, and like you can't get really close to that bucket because if you get a little wind, that could kick you into the bucket and you're drones at the bait base of the pole. Yeah. When I won the first year, it was kind of just getting like a feel for it. And the second year I'd come up with kind of a different plan. I was like, I'm gonna take it off. I'm gonna put it in sport mode, which doesn't have any of the obstacle avoidance sensors. And I was telling my supervisor and he just kind of looked at me. He's like, are you sure? And I was like maybe not. I was like, we'll see what happened. So what did you do? Did you put it in Spott? I didn't. So my what I fly now is a Maic Dji Mavic three E, which is it's got like a fifty six power zoom camera. So when the guy told us, you know, the more you have in the picture of the image in the bucket, the more point, the better you're gonna score, the better score. So I was like, I'll get you know, within four foot zoom in and I'll fill the whole thing up. And it worked. It did work. So again, I think a lot of what you do is either identify a problem before it's a problem, correct it, or you have a problem now you work back to a solution. I mean, is that an accurate way of saying the way you look at things? Yeah? I mean as as a whole, my co op, we're pretty unique compared to a lot of other places because where we do it all, Like a lot of your places have specifics, like I want to say dominion. They've got overhead crews, they've got underground crews, they've got tree cutter crews. So we have a tree cutting crew, but we also cut trees. We do underground, we do overhead, We troubleshoot, we do new construction. We do rephasing, which is, you know, revamping the old stuff. We do everything, were switching orders and substations. So what is your assignment? Now? What do you do? Now? I do what I'm told. So you're not so whatever. So you don't have like a specific thing. I mean, I could I could be in the bucket one day. I could be setting poles the next, you know, doing underground repairs or news services. I could be flying the drone. I could you know. I guess when you learn everything that then you kind of go, so, how long is the crew that you have? Are you in a crew of two or three? Now I'm in a crew of three, and so the crew of three, how like level of experience you have based on my math fourteen years of experience? What about the other. My foreman's got thirty two years okay, I think, and then my apprentice has maybe three years okay, So it's kind of a good com so who has to do the most work depends on the day. Okay, I was gonna say the apprentice, You're like, go get me this, go get me that. If it's if it's something that I feel like, because I've kind of been delegated to training, you know, the apprentice, if it's something that I feel like, you know he can learn from, is competent enough to do, which I don't mean comptent is like a derogatory term. But you don't want them to get hurt. Yeah, you want to, you want to. I think it's one of those things you want them to be successful. You just don't want them to hurt himself. I want him to be able to do as much as he can, say, even if it's uncomfortable but safe. Okay, And that's a hard I would say that that is a really hard line sometimes to figure out because you can't predict everything. You know what your skill level is. But I think part of I think part of what makes what you do very difficult, which I think aligns with like first responders are you don't get to pick where you go. You don't get like when there's an outage, you don't get to go lie, I really want to go over here. It's more comfortable for me. So you you have to use a lot of Like for us in law Enforce, we don't have a whole lot of different you know, we've got vehicles, we've got our fires, we've got everything on our belt and everything else. But like you have a ton of stuff of equipment to make it work, it's not it's not just as simple as like, oh, I've got a pole and now just throw something on it. Like you've got a lot of components on there. Yeah, And it comes back to like the whole like out of the box thinking. You even when you have everything that you could potentially need, that still doesn't mean that you have specifically what you need. Sometimes you have to get out of the box and improvise a little bit. And I think that one thing that I try to put I guess into motion is I'm not the person that's going to say, hey, do it this way, you're doing it wrong, because it's not how I do it. I'm the person that's like, hey, do it how you want. Make sure it works. If you're I mean, you might f it up, but it can be fixed. But that's how you're going to learn. You're going to learn that, like your thought process didn't arrive at the successful destination, but you learned it yourself. Yeah, exactly. Okay, because when you're out there by yourself and you're the one making that decision, you might fall back to that and then it's too late to have somebody to help. You correct it. Yeah. I can have someone tell me how to do something, but I'm probably gonna do it the way that I think is right regardless. So I try to, you know, allow people to make their own decisions and come up with their own conclusions. So back to of major event and things like that, how how do y'all coordinate? I understand going backwards, but like, let's just say in the rural area that you're in twenty thirty houses without power, Like, how does that work? How? Like I think everybody sits there at home and they're like says, I'm not gonna get power for twelve more hours. How do y'all work through getting that done? And I guess I'm not in my brain, it's not really clear on how do twenty houses lose power? So the so it comes back to what I call your isolation points, which are where your fuses are so your main lines, you have three phases coming out of the station, and those are the more spread out isolation points, which you know, like like we said, are more terrain based or accessibility base. And then what we try to do is every tap that comes off of that main line, we try to put a fuse on. So say, for instance, Roads Farm, you could have a tree fall in the back of Roads Farm, and our fuse is at the beg at the four way intersection, and it's gonna have twenty or so meters off, So you can go back there and cut that tree off and then come and heat it back up, and all those houses are going to come in come back on at one time, which is the best case scenario. But if something happens, like a freak storm comes through and there's trees falling everywhere, and you know you have fifteen different trees that have fallen in fifteen different sections, that's that's when the slow restoration kind of happens. And when that happens, people do get pissed. But we work off of numbers, so we're gonna try to get on as many people as we can and then work our way down. So we'll put on a hundred before we put on two. Right, it's all depending. And then you have your critical structures like hospitals things like that. Correct. I mean y'all don't have that. We don't. But down in Palmyra they've got you know, the Walmart distribution center and so that's a priority. Yeah. Oh yeah, Design's crossroads is a big priority. Yeah, So talk a little bit, talk a little bit more about I think I think it's kind of we talked about being a first responder and in that designation and what that means. Different people get, you know, you get discounts and you get all these different things. I think it's kind of odd just talk about what it feels like to be like I Sheriff's office calls you and is like, hey, we've gotta line down, and nobody there is doing anything like rescue can't go in, fire can't go in. They don't know, you know, I mean, how many of how many first responders have lost their lives with live lines, A lot of them and you're the one that's saving them. What does it feel like to not be known as one of them? I mean, I definitely feel like there's I feel like we should be as as linemen. We should be recognized as well, because, like you said, there's a lot of instances where the first the acknowledged first responders will call us before they can do what they need to do, right and. I and so. But on a day to day basis, Like, obviously our job is important in a catastrophic event, but I think if you talk about a car wreck like that's pretty it's it's not cut and dry, but it's not that difficult to It's just it's it's we've seen car wrecks before. We deal with the car wreck, we deal with the traffic and everything else. But like for y'all, y'all could have a catastrophic event and it's like y'all recreating the wheel. How so from my standpoint, y'all recreate the wheel on a daily basis, there's. A lot of. I can't think of the word, but yeah, a lot of workarounds. Yeah, because there's a lot of different components, a lot of audibles, Like there's no playbook really for what you do. Like there's some definitive things, Okay, this is this is the main power station, substation and everything else, but there are a lot of different things that go from there. Yeah, yeah, there's always change in variables. So what is the most difficult area that you think for you to work in? Like if you're like I think, for us, we always think about active shooter. That's the worst possible scenario in a school type of environment. What is the worst case scenario? Knowing what you do know about power, what is the worst case scenario? I mean there's the worst case scenario I would say is when you have I mean personally I hate going in substations. Why is that? Because if you're not like precise, it could turn into like a bomb and literally explode, like the regulators that we have. If if you don't know what you're doing and you step that thing one way or the other, it's it could explode, and it's you know, a thousand degrees oil raining down on top of you. And so you still have to do that kind of stuff with. What you do we do, Yeah, we do everything. We have specific departments, but we do a little bit of everything. So what would cause you to have to regulate that voltage issues? Like if you so like say your house is supposed to be carrying two hundred and all, right, so what causes that they can explode? If they have an internal fault, they could explode if you try to, like if you have a bad regulator and you don't it's got it steps voltage up and down. If you don't zero it, which I don't know the specifics, but I know if you don't open it. If you open it and it's not zeroed, it gets pretty funky. So if I go to if somebody calls about a vulture complaint, I go to this house and they have lower high voltage. I go to the next house, they have lower high voltage. Then I have to go back to the station and check the regulator to see what the output on the regulator is. And then you step the regulator up or down to change the voltage on the system. And that could affect one house, or it could affect a ton. It's going to affect every house on that circuit, on that circuit, how many, well we won't go intose circuits. I don't want to give away. I don't know. It's a lot. It's a lot. I just I don't know. Like for me, look at I look at what we look at from a power standpoint, and they always talk about how our grid is, you know, like you talk about you know how frustrated people get when they don't have power. They get hot, they get they get cold, whatever. You know, their quality of life is directly affected about. What you do. But I just wonder from your experience, and maybe this isn't a good question, but like I think about because I worked a case not long ago. Well in my brain, it was not long ago. It was several years ago. But one of the things that was part of it is he worked for a power company unnamed power company, but he had some really radical views of the way things should be. How much damage could someone do that knew what they were doing to a grid? It detrimental, devastating. Yeah, it wouldn't. It wouldn't. I'm not let's say it wouldn't take much. But someone with the knowledge could cause serious damage. And how what is the likelihood that they would ever get caught? Because we're talking about a lot of the stuff is isolated, correct. And I mean which we do have a lot of security cameras and you know, surveillance on the main places, But but. You don't I think everybody thinks. One of the things that I heard is like a show the other day about the microchips that Taiwan is making and if China takes that over and all these different things. But like I don't think people think like when people think about terrorist events, they think like somebody coming in there and shooting and all this other stuff, Like I mean they just shut down the grid and yeah, but I look at it as like from my standpoint is people learn from other what other people accomplish, and so like from my standpoint, when we when we think about what can happen, I always think about like the vehicles, Like you get all these people of massive people walking in a vehicle that's like a bomb. You know, it's like it is a five or six thousand pounds depending on what you have on it, bomb, battering ram. That's just going through a massive humanity, which is what happened in New Orleans. But then I think about, like when we talk about the power grid, like if you have somebody that knows what they're doing, they could, like I think that that would be have a huge effect on people with like I don't know if I have power. I mean, just think about what happens when we think gas prices are going up, people are like mass hysteria and like people just expect like they don't have the knowledge that you have of workarounds and things like that. And so back to my point with you know, the chips and everything else, is that if the grid goes down, like the small components go down, that's one thing. But like the large transformers, they say those take years to make. When you when you cut the head off of the snake, you create some serious issues. How back to the power thing. I hate to end it with like people freaking people out, but like from my standpoint, I look at it and I think, are we really doing? Are we really doing y'all a service? Like with the work you do. Not to ignore, first of all, acknowledge the fact that y'all are definitely first responders because like what you do is critical to civilization because people will become really uncivilized when like I thought the other day when we didn't have Verizon in a few places went down and people were losing their mind, like I can't call nine one one, I can't do this. You think about COVID, I think about people talk about that and they're like people were frantic buying all the toilet paper, and Buddy Mane was like you got water, Like you know, the French have been doing it for years, like that you don't need toilet paper. There's there's a way around it. But I think I think it's just what is projected in people's minds, and so like from my standpoint, that is where y'all earn. What you do as a first responder is you help society maintain order because without power, you don't have stoplights, you don't have you get you got a hole, a pamper population. It's not like over in Afghanistan where they have everything on generator and you're like we may or may in the capital, you may or may not have power today if you have a if you're wealthy enough to have a generator, you may or may not have power because you can't get gas. But I do think part of society is people that maintain the critical infrastructure and respond when that that fails are part of society, which to me, by designation be it should be a first responder. So anything you like to add, like a shout out, talk about your do you need any more business? As far as yards you're you're like happy. I was gonna say, since you're so technical, unless you hire your brother to like cut really fast you've got enough. I don't know. I think I think my wife would give him. A run for his money as far as how fast she does. I think it's a family thing because Amber's like that she she cuts grass like she's she's on fire, and it's just like, I mean, anyway, Well, I appreciate your time, man, it's been really really good. And I don't know how we get y'all that designation, but I think maybe contacts some people in government and just like get that designation. Because I mean, all we can hope is you know the right person. Here's it. I just wonder, like, so I've seen the flags. You've got green for the military, you got blue for law enforcement, got red for firefighters. What do y'all want? What color would you want on the flag? You can't do black because that's like isis so like what what black? What color would you go with? Like navy blue? You can't we already have blue when you can't back the blue? So like you've got to pick a color? What color? So that's that's the key is once. I come up with a color, they'll accept it. Yeah, I think so all right, man, I appreciate your time. All right, thanks,
