Ramsey (9/3/24)
At 5:08 p.m. Tuesday, September 3, 2024, Anoka Substation Circuit 5 recloser locked out, leaving 648 members in Nowthen and Ramsey without power. Anoka County Dispatch reported a vehicle struck our pole along County Rd 64, just east of Xenolith St NW. Our crews arrived and isolated the damage as much as possible.  At 6:39 p.m., power was restored to 542 affected members west of the incident. The remaining 106 affected members had to remain without power while our crews replaced the broken pole. At 10:15 p.m., repairs were complete and power was restored to all affected members.

System Wide Storm Damage (8/26/24 & 8/29/24)

The week of August 26, 2024, will be remembered in our outage response history as unprecedented. It began with a historic outage affecting 20,000 members with back-to-back storms on Monday night and Tuesday morning. Just as we were nearing the final stages of power restoration, another round of severe storms hit on Thursday night. Nearly 40,000 members experienced an interruption last week.

Our words of gratitude: 

• Community support: Your outage reporting, patience and encouragement were invaluable.
• Mutual aid: Assisting utilities, contractors and vendors provided the people, equipment and supplies we needed to supplement our stocked resources. 
• Our employees: Their selfless dedication, with vacations and family events voluntarily canceled, and their determined attitudes were truly remarkable.

Our lessons learned:

• Technology: Early failures due to systems being overwhelmed were frustrating. We’ve identified breaking points and are taking steps to prevent this in the future. 
• Member education: While it’s advantageous that two-thirds of our 9,600 miles of line are safely underground, those lines are fed by overhead lines vulnerable to the extreme winds, lightning, and two tornadoes that hit our service area. Click here for outage FAQs.
• Safety: We value the safety of our field workers during restoration efforts. To ensure protection of the public, your family and our field workers, we didn’t take shortcuts, even when we desperately wanted to reach the next member on our list. There is no room for error when working with electricity.

This week, we’re breathing a collective sigh of relief and discussing lessons learned across all disciplines. We know that Connexus employees — and many Connexus members — will talk about last week’s experiences for years to come. It was truly unprecedented. 

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Brian Burandt & Yan Paul Martinez
Interim Co-CEOs

​​​​THANK YOU
Assisting Utilities 
Anoka Municipal Utility 
Crow Wing Power (Brainerd)
East Central Energy (Braham)
Elk River Municipal Utilities
Highline Construction (Paynesville)
Kandiyohi Power Cooperative (Spicer)
Lake Country Power (Grand Rapids) 
McLeod Cooperative Power (Glencoe) 
Meeker Cooperative Light & Power Association (Litchfield)
Minnesota Valley Electric Cooperative (Jordan)
Polk-Burnett Electric Cooperative (Centuria, Wisconsin)
Stearns Electric Association (St. Joseph)
Wright-Hennepin Cooperative Electric Association (Rockford)

Tree Contractors 
Asplundh
Carr’s Tree Service
Wright Tree Service

Procurement
Beaudry Oil & Propane
Bell Lumber & Pole
Border States
Dakota Electric Association 
Elk River Municipal Utilities 
Irby Utilities
RESCO
Southwire
Wesco
Wright-Hennepin Cooperative Electric Association
 

Columbus & East Bethel (8/13/24)
At 6:37 p.m. Tuesday, August 13, 2024, Forest Lake Substation Circuit 21 recloser locked out, leaving 736 members in Columbus and East Bethel without power. Washington County Dispatch reports a tree on our overhead line near W Broadway Ave & Xingu St NE. Our crews arrived and removed the tree from our overhead line. At 7:41 p.m., power was restored via SCADA to all affected members.