Climate Matters: Ameren smart investments are reducing weather-related power outages

An increasing number of severe storms and disasters threaten infrastructure in much of the central United States, but Ameren has been preparing for years with its Smart Energy Plan.

Landy Wince, the senior director of regional division operations for Ameren Missouri, says the plan began after they saw a need for newer infrastructure. "Also, we knew that there's technology out there that can help restore customers quickly, without having to roll a truck sometimes," Landy says.

That technology includes new smart switches that can adapt to outages and restore power faster. "Basically, how it works is the smart switch can detect an outage, and it has the ability to safely shut off that circuit. But also has the redundancy to restore a separate circuit." Landy says, "Sometimes there's a tree or something that may have fallen down and crossed our line, and it would detect that, and it will restart that circuit."

Ameren says its smart switches have prevented more than 114,000 customer outages, equivalent to 30 million outage minutes avoided. The Smart Energy plan also includes other investments to weather the storms.

"There are composite poles put on the circuit. There are smart switches put on a circuit to allow faster recovery, and then there's also upgrades to some of the cabling so that it's more of a state-of-the-art, future type of system." Landy explains. Ameren reports that there have been zero outages along these upgraded cable lines.

Landy says Ameren will continue expanding the Smart Energy Plan to cover more of its customers. "We're still investing in our Smart Plan. That's not gonna stop anytime soon." Landy says, "It's one of those things where we see the need, we're gonna keep making those investments because we haven't covered all of our territory with smart energy, but we have plans to do so."