By Kiera Morgan

Alisa Dunlap the regional business manager with Pacific Power gave an update to the Lincoln City Council recently. She said they have 13 people in the local office but they bring on more people when there are big storms to cover any possible outages. Dunlap told the council that they try to be very involved in the community and support local non-profits. She also explained Lincoln Cities involvement with the Blue Sky program. “The Blue Sky program is a volunteer renewable energy program. Lincoln City actually had a successful blue sky energy challenge a few years ago.” She said they also offer a grant program through Blue Sky. “Westwind in Otis actually received one of the grants and they will be doing a solar installation at their property.”

She said they are also getting ready to roll out a smart meter program. This helps in cutting down man hours in reading the meters individually and will allow customers to get more information at their fingertips. With the smart meter customers will have more control over their energy usage. She said they will get customers set up with an online program and accounts can be monitored on a real time basis. Dunlap added another advantage with the smart meters is that it will help with quicker restoration time if there is a power outage. Right now they don’t know if you are out of power until the customers call and with the smart meter they will be able to know because the meter will go offline. More details about the smart meter program will be available in the coming months.