Watertown Municipal Electric Department

Volume 7Issue 10September 2017

Watertown Municipal Electric Department

Volume 7Issue 10September 2017

In the 2015 SDMEA Comparison of Operations, Watertown had the highest number of total electric meters with 12,758. I decided to travel to Watertown to meet with the men and women behind the scenes that keep the city progressing with their forward thinking.

Doug Enstad has been a trademark at Watertown Municipal Utilities for 38 years. He began his career at WMU in 1979 and has seen many changes throughout his time there. Since he began as the Electrical Meter Foreman in 1990 the city has built two sub stations to make a total of 5 substations and 7 total substation transformers. WMU has also changed over from mechanical protection to electronic relays. They have installed a SCADA system and have transferred over to AMR. They have also installed transmission loop around the town to the substations as well as upgrading from 69kV to 115kV for those lines. Watertown is also about 50% underground with 126.90 circuit miles of three phase underground and 105.08 miles of single phase underground at this point.

As I sat down to visit with Doug and Todd Chambers (Director of Operations), I was told that Watertown receives between 30% and 35% of their power from WAPA and is an MRES customer for the remaining power purchased. They also informed me that MRES has an operational generation plant in Watertown that could be used in emergency situations. The generator is exercised and tested annually and rated at 60MW.

Picture of the MRES Watertown Power Plant.

After the interview Doug drove me around the town to show me a couple of the substations and mentioned that they now have a 115KV loop between the substations as well as a fiberoptic loop to communicate with each sub. WMU also provides fiberoptic to the schools and City Hall.

Substation located on the south side of Highway 212

Control room for the uptown Substation
Uptown Substation located in the downtown area.

From Left to Right: Ron Renelt, Justin Stanley, Brian Benson, Stephen Catlette, Jeff Determan, Doug Enstad, Todd Chambers, Dave Meseberg, Daren Gollnick, Lance Tolley, James Rudebusch, Brent Hansen. Not pictured: Alex Jonnes, Mike Pederson, Steve Witte.

I had an excellent time meeting with several of the employees at Watertown Municipal Utilities including a quick visit with General Manager-Steve Lehner and Director of Administration-Adam Karst. It was also great to meet the Line Foreman-Brian Benson, and the 10 linemen. They were all very polite and seem to take pride in their work at WMU. Their hard work and pride in the City of Watertown shows us what makes their HOMETOWN great!

Questions? Comments? Email me at Call Chris: 605-770-6299

Volume 7Issue 10September 2017