The Rochelle Municipal Utilities electric department has seen “very few outages” during this season of spring storms and has made recent infrastructure reinvestments to shore up its system, RMU Superintendent of Electric Operations Blake Toliver said May 6.

The past month has seen numerous severe thunderstorm and tornado watches and warnings in the area. Toliver said system resiliency upgrades have included replacing aging pole lines, upgrading conductor in weak spots and tree trimming and vegetation management. Spring is typically the most volatile time for RMU weather wise, Toliver said.

“I believe reinvesting into our infrastructure has helped to reduce outages during storms significantly,” Toliver said. “We’re trying to get away from chasing our tails all the time. It used to be waiting until storms came through and finding problem areas and working on them. Now we’re focusing on decaying infrastructure beforehand and making those areas more robust. Obviously you can’t replace every pole in the system every year, so we’re taking our best stab at the locations that need the most attention.”

In 2025, RMU saw 31 outage events across its entire system. The utility saw an Average Service Availability Index of 99.9828% last year, which means the percentage of time power was available. RMU’s average customer was out of power for about 90 minutes total in 2025. RMU saw about .32 outages per customer last year and has better outage statistics than neighboring power provider ComEd by “a significant margin” each year, Toliver said.

RMU saw its last major storm outage March 14, 2025. A wind storm caused $516,236 worth of damage and expense to the electric department through infrastructure and personnel costs.

“That storm was really what turned the tables on maintenance and proactive pole replacements for us,” Toliver said. “We lost 26 poles in less than 30 seconds. It was significant damage. We took that and ran with it and replaced over 140 poles last year due to that one event. Our typical pole replacement schedule was 25 to 35 poles a year. Replacing that many poles in a year helps a lot. We’re planting larger poles than we used to use.”

RMU has also done recent strategic line under grounding in heavily wooded areas where trees are a conflict with overhead lines. Toliver said investment work has also been done recently on lightning arrestors and wildlife guards in the RMU system to prevent power failures that can happen on good weather days.

In recent years, RMU implemented Daupler, a response management software that uses both human interaction and artificial intelligence to map and designate areas of power outages. It has also expanded its customer service phone system for customers to call in outages.

“When I first started here, we had one person taking calls 24 hours a day and the phone would ring off the hook with one person taking calls in a large-scale event,” Toliver said. “Now we have at least eight lines available for people to call in and the calls are handled much quicker.”

RMU always has two linemen on call at all times to respond to outages. Additional crew members are called in if needed or if power is out in multiple areas. When storms are expected in the area, preparations are made, including making sure as many linemen as possible are available and that trucks are fully fueled and stocked, he said.

“We’re always as ready as we’re going to be for storms,” Toliver said. “Because you never know what’s going to happen. We do as much as we can ahead of time to prepare for a large event. The reinvestments we’ve made in our system make me feel more at ease when a storm is coming compared to a few years ago.”