Sunday, January 10th, the sun rose over a cold morning in Lake Ann. With projected highs in the low 20s, three thousand Cherryland members awoke to find their power out.

The problem would turn out to be a failure in the Lake Ann substation that would take crews from Wolverine Power Cooperative seven hours to repair.

Despite the extensive repairs Wolverine undertook, Cherryland crews were able to restore power to our members within the first few hours by backfeeding everyone affected from our nearby Interlochen substation.

Ten years ago, this wouldn’t have been possible. Cherryland’s distribution system is among the most robust in the industry because we are continually investing in our infrastructure, to the tune of about $3 million dollars each year.

One key design feature that Cherryland builds into these infrastructure projects is loop feeds.

Historically, power distribution systems used a radial structure such that there was only one possible path for power to flow. Electricity flowed from the hub (substation) down the radial “spokes” to the member’s load. If something interrupted that flow of power, the member was left without power until the original path could be restored.

Over the last decade, we have been building loop feeds throughout our system. Put simply, these loop feeds are created when two radial lines are built so that their ends connect to each other with a switch that is normally off. If the flow of power is interrupted in one of the two radial lines, power can be turned back on from the other direction by “flipping the switch,” or backfeeding power.

The majority of Cherryland substations are now connected with loop feeds. In addition, most subdivisions with more than 20 homes also have loop feeds. These system improvements help reduce outage duration and frequency for our members.

With the support of your board of directors, Cherryland has made significant infrastructure investments to keep our system strong and vibrant. With these investments, we’ve been able to bring our system reliability up to 99.9%.

While this January, it was our Lake Ann members who benefited from these improvements, next time it might be you.

So, the next time the power goes out, remember that Cherryland is actively working on both long-term upgrades with loop feeds and that our line crews are out in the elements working around the clock to repair power safely and swiftly.