VPR’s Mark Breen featured at Washington Electric’s annual meeting May 2 in Barre

Washington Electric Cooperative will celebrate a year of accomplishments, chiefly the completion of its system-wide installation of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI, also known as smart metering), at the Co-op’ s 74th Annual Membership Meeting on Thursday evening, May 2, at the Barre Elks Club. The guest speaker at this year’ s annual meeting will be Mark Breen, the well-known ‘ Eye on the Sky’ meteorologist for Vermont Public Radio.
Breen’ s topic will be ‘ Old Weather Sayings,’ and is a reminder that, particularly in rural areas where daily lives and livelihoods were often directly connected to weather patterns and events, people traditionally sought ways to foretell what was going to happen.
‘ They were paying attention to animals, to formations of clouds, to birds, or the wind direction’¦ all of these little clues,’ said Breen. ‘ Before forecasts of the weather and satellites and computers, this is what they had. In some ways it was rudimentary science; it started with observation, and that’ s also what science is based on.’
The Eye on the Sky is a joint venture of VPR and the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury, where he is a staff member. Breen has been with the program since its outset 30 years ago. He is also known for his ‘ Eye on the Night Sky,’ which focuses on visible astronomy, and for other features like the Vermont Weather Journal.
‘ An interest in weather, just because of our daily experience, is something that unites nearly all Vermonters and Washington Electric Co-op members,’ said WEC General Manager Avram Patt. ‘ Mark will be discussing the perspectives of Vermonters of an earlier time, before forecasters had the incredible technology they use today. We’ re a rural electric co-op; most of our members still live in the countryside and observe and experience their environment in ways that are very visceral. I think they’ ll really enjoy Mark’ s presentation.’
WEC members will have other things to hear about and participate in at their electric cooperative’ s annual meeting, as well. The meeting always features a dinner (reservations are required; people still without reservations can call the Co-op to check on availability), begins at 5:30 p.m. Doors at the Barre Elks Club will open at 5 p.m. The building is located at 10 Jefferson Street, behind the Aldrich Public Library.
WEC members who have not yet cast their ballots by mail in the election of candidates for the utility’ s Board of Directors will be able to do so at the annual meeting. The ballot boxes will close at 6:30 p.m., and the results will be announced before the conclusion of the meeting. This year the Committee on Candidates officially confirmed the qualifications of three candidates. All three candidates are incumbent directors: current WEC President Barry Bernstein of East Calais; Roy Folsom of Cabot, and Annie Reed of Marshfield. Ballots also provide space for write-in candidates. Each year, three seats expire on the nine-member Board and are filled through these direct elections.
Washington Electric’ s annual meetings also feature officers’ reports, employee recognition, door prizes, and displays of electricity-saving technologies for the home. One of the most important features of the annual meeting is the unique opportunity it provides for members of the cooperative to ask questions of the company’ s senior management staff and directors, and provide their own input concerning WEC’ s policies and practices.
Over the past 12 months Washington Electric Cooperative installed a ‘ wired’ advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) that uses the Co-op’ s power lines to transmit digital energy-use information to the company’ s computers. The AMI system expedites billing, improves outage response, and will enable members to review their usage information (through a secure web connection) which could help them improve their energy efficiency and lower their costs. The Co-op’ s wired system does not use ‘ wireless’ radio wave technology.
Another important accomplishment for the Co-op, since last year’ s annual meeting, is the recent completion of its multi-year coordinated fuse-and-recloser system. This advanced technology further improves reliability, and enables the electric system to recover, automatically, from temporary faults, avoiding the vast majority of potential outages with no one being affected.
Washington Electric Cooperative was founded by rural central Vermonters in 1939. The Co-op now serves approximately 10,500 member-owners in 41 towns, chiefly in Washington, Orange, and Caledonia counties.