Robert Kent Named Director of Operations for Blue Ridge Electric
For Immediate Release
Contact: Renee Whitener, Director of Corporate Communications, Blue Ridge Electric Membership Corporation, (828) 758-2383 ext. 3213; Pager:1-800-471-1323; or E-mail: Renee Whitener
Lenoir, North Carolina (November 27, 2002) – Robert Kent has been named director of operations for Blue Ridge Electric Membership Corporation, a not-for-profit member-owned electric utility serving over 64,000 members in Caldwell, Watauga, Ashe, Alleghany, Wilkes and Alexander counties.
Previously, Kent served for the past 10 years as operations manager for the utility’s Caldwell district office where he supervised a team of 18 linemen and additional technical and support personnel. In his new position, Kent will oversee planning and supervision of operation activities for the cooperative’s four district offices in Lenoir, Boone, West Jefferson and Sparta. He will also oversee the cooperative’s right-of-way clearing program to ensure reliability of the electric system.
“Ensuring superior customer service to our members needing electric service, restoration of power during outage situations, new construction or other needs is a major focus,” Kent said.
For example, he said, “One way we’ve changed to meet member’s needs is to have the linemen work in shifts that go beyond 5 o’clock. Members like the flexibility this provides and allows them to be at home or on-site when linemen are working.
“As a company, we’ve also recently renewed our emphasis on respect for member’s property,” he added. “When our work takes us on a member’s property, our goal is to leave it as we found it.”
Respect for members’ property also means more thorough communication efforts. “We are currently undertaking a major upgrade throughout our mountain counties and we’re making a strong effort to contact each and every person whose property we’ll need to be on. This is easy when the property has a house or business on it—anything that requires electricity and therefore a meter. This is because we have an address and phone number linked to every meter and this gives us information to contact the property owner. In cases where the property is simply land—and there is no meter—the communication effort becomes more difficult. However, we believe the extra research work to determine the property owner will show we truly do care about our members and we respect the land in and around our electric system,” Kent explained.
Delivering highly reliable electricity to members is at the heart of operations, Kent said. While Blue Ridge Electric maintained a reliability rate of 99.97 percent last year, Kent understands that even the average consumer today desires the highest level of reliability due to the technologically advanced equipment and appliances in our homes and businesses.
Kent’s focus on reliability includes protecting the integrity of nearly 7,000 miles of transmission and distribution lines—an amount that would stretch from North Carolina to California and back and still have line left over. The cooperative began a mission in 1997 to have the right-of-way around these lines trimmed within eight years. With just two years to go on this cycle, Kent believes cooperative members will benefit from the effort.
“On a more regular trimming schedule, the brush and trees near the lines will be smaller and typically won’t interfere with the power,” he said.
Kent joined the cooperative as a meter reader in 1981. He lives in Lenoir with his wife, Kathy, and their three children.
