Eagle Creek residents ask PUD to bring the fiber

Residents of Eagle Creek want PUD fiber. A meeting was held at the Chelan PUD office on Feb. 8 to discuss the matter. Chelan PUD Managing Director of Fiber and Telecom Mike Coleman sat down with the Echo for a discussion. He said when an area asks for fiber, there are a number of considerations.
“When we initiated the Public Power Benefit Program, we looked at the entire county in terms of what had not been built. Probably as important, we looked at the areas of the county that had been built, but hadn’t been totally completed,” Coleman said. “So there were gaps in the existing network coverage. We compiled all those, used a data set and analyzed it. We were looking at, how far out should we build? As part of the 2015 strategic plan, we had topic teams and I had customer owners from around the county on the Fiber Topic team.”
That was one of the questions they wanted answered, he said. They also wanted to know, how the county perceives the value of fiber? Should they continue to extend it? How far should they extend it?
The conclusion, Coleman said, was, after all was said and done, and through multiple iterations, was that a reasonable program would be to extend to about 85-90 percent of the county. At the time, the PUD had about 69 percent of the county covered. Over the last two years, they’ve grown the network 5 percent from 69-to-74 percent.
The reason they’ve left it a little bit indefinite is because they don’t know where the growth will occur over the course of this program, he said. If the growth hits where the network already is, that helps. If it hits in some area where they’re not able to build to, it hurts.
The residents of Eagle Creek are asking when they’ll get fiber. Like everybody else, they would really like it now. Coleman said they have a well defined process they go through, allowing operational priorities to dictate building each year.
“First of all, do we have the availability of funding? Did the commissioners allocate funding to us for the next year? Second, we do what we call a pre-selection and evaluation process. Out of that, we work jointly with the customer utility side, the line operations group, because we work hand-in-hand with them,” Coleman said. “We need to look at what their resources, work plans and priorities are versus our work plans, resources and priorities. Out of that, we get a melding of the minds that says that particular group of areas is the most feasible for the following year.”
Concurrent with that, Coleman said they have a preliminary design phase going on to gather preliminary information to refresh their data for those given areas. That gives them a good feeling of what is build-able the following year.
What that culminates in, between the line ops and the fiber group, is they get a recommended set of build areas, which matched against the funding, then they make a recommendation to the board and it goes through the annual budget process.
At that point, Coleman said he publicly announces the areas they will go to the following year. They don’t work beyond one year right now, he said. Basically, they’ve already gone through the process for 2018.
“We start in January, February and March of each year with all the preliminary work. We generally complete our draft business plans in the June timeframe. Also, generally takes us from June to September, October to finalize the precise list,” Coleman said. “Then it goes through the budget process into late October through November into the first board meeting of December. Out of that, I know I have the money to build it and complete it, which is very important.”
Secondly, they have an agreement and set of priorities between fiber and line ops. Coleman said they always follow the path of the electrical infrastructure. They look at this and as they are making these decisions, one of the top priorities for the district as a whole is the reliability of the electrical system.
“They may have an area that has the statistics that says we need to work on that area, we need to improve the reliability. If they do, it only makes sense for me to be in that same too, if I need to build fiber. It needs to be done jointly,” Coleman said. “It’s much more efficient and cost effective. We’re spending customer owners money. We want to do it as effectively as we can.”
How much does the PUD consider the amount of potential hook ups? Coleman said they’ve gone into some rather sparsely populated areas. The objective they came out of strategic planning with was to achieve 85-90 percent of the county with $25 million.
Whey they look at that, Coleman said they think about the average cost for any area passed. They range from A-to-Z on the continuum.
“There are some areas we can build that it’s only going to cost $1,000 per premises passed. There are other areas where you have a person living on a single track road six miles down the side of a mountain. That’s going to cost me $250,000 to get to that one person,” Coleman said.
Coleman said they took an average for the cost of premises passed for each of the areas. They rank them. The key there, he said, is they knew that information would change over the course of a 10-11 year program. They evaluate it every year to see what has changed.
“So one of the things when people call us and ask, we look at our information and give them a good answer. If something has changed, that area may go back into the mix or go out of the mix, depending on which direction the change was,” Coleman said. “In the case of Eagle Creek, because of the road widening project, we got the electrical work done and we got a fiber conduit placed with that. It cut the cost for premise passed to almost half what it was. That now makes it feasible. The next question is, when is it going to get built?”
The first 1.5 miles of Eagle Creek had the road improved, so there’s also improved electrical and fiber conduit. The electrical is overhead, so the fiber will be overhead at that point. There are some areas of Eagle Creek that are direct buried, he said, which is an expensive proposition. Some of the line drops to the house will probably be direct buried.
Coleman said they look at that and say, what are the estimated costs? Does it fit within the overall program so they can get their goal at less than $25 million? They evaluate that constantly, he said.
Fiber has two drivers on the cost, density and distance.
“When you’re distances go up and your density goes down, the cost of the fiber for premises passed just goes through the sky. Even if you look at Chelan County or a national basis, what you see is the cost per premises passed is very flat until you get up into that 80 percent range,” Coleman said. “Then it starts tipping up and as you go above that 85 percent, it just hooks straight up like a hockey stick. That’s what we deal with the remainder of the county. We’re constantly looking for, how can we get further? How can we achieve what we’re doing now at less cost? What is the next big technology shift we can take advantage of? That’s a full time job for us.”
So where does Eagle Creek land on this? Based on the additional conduit placed, it makes it feasible for the PUD, so it will go back on the list of feasible areas, he said. Depending upon when operational priorities allow them to do it, they’ll build it.
So, basically, it’s indefinite for now. Coleman knows nobody really likes that answer, but people need to understand that things change. One of the areas on their maps the fit everything and they all agreed looked good was Yaksum Canyon and Mission Creek in Cashmere.
But whey got to looking at that, a detailed look, that was a very old electrical infrastructure, previously on owned by the city of Cashmere, and it had reliability issues.
“We looked at that and said, we really need to take a step back, instead of just getting the fiber in there, let’s rebuild the electrical infrastructure at the same time. We publicly called a halt to that in 2016 and said we’re going to slow it down. We ended up building it in 2017 and built the entire electrical infrastructure as well as put the fiber in,” Coleman said. “The customer owners got a great new system that improves their reliability plus brought them fiber. We tend to look at it that way because it makes much more sense for the customer owners and it’s a more cost effective way for the PUD to operate.”
Generally, the fiber will always be tied to electrical improvement, but it varies, he said. There’s areas they may have done electrical rehab work and there’s very little work to get the fiber on it. When they’re in those time periods and they can build an area like that, he said they do.
The PUD has a lot on their plate, improving the reliability and keeping the system operating, he said. It’s a balancing of resources, where when the fiber can work without them, they’ll do it. Otherwise, Coleman said if it is an area they need to look at the same time as line ops, they’ll do it.
Everybody thinks hanging the fiber on poles is simple and it ought to be quick, Coleman said.
“In reality, a lot of the standards have changed on the electrical side, and on the fiber side. In order for us to hang fiber, we have to look at every pole and it has to be evaluated. Once you add the extra weight and the attachment for the fiber, will it still meet standards?,” Coleman said. “If not, how much do we have to do to bring it up to standards? In some cases, it may not be that much. It can range from fairly easy modifications to having to replace the pole. All of that has to go through this design process that says, yes I can go build in that area.”
Basically Eagle Creek is on the list, but Coleman can’t say exactly when.
“I understand that is not the answer people want. At the same time, there are areas all over the county where the information changes, circumstances change. An area that may have looked feasible to build on a preliminary look, when we take a harder look, it’s not feasible to build. There’s something driving the cost up,” he said.
Fiber projects this year include some of Chumstick Highway, areas around Manson and Cashmere. There is also some infill work where the original network wasn’t completely filled in. There are areas all over the county, he said, so they are steadily going at it.
The goal this year to add about 1,059 premises.
Ian Dunn can be reached at 548-5286 or editor@leavenworthecho.com