May be attached photo's have to go under the photo section.

What name does you local POCO Utility have ?

Here in Auckland, New Zealand it is called
Vector for the lines and distribution company.
Which supplies power from the grid exit points to the end users like you and me.



The grid operator is Transpower.

The big generators are:
Meridian Energy
Mighty River Power
Contact Energy
Trustpower

edited to insert Vector image, Raymond

[This message has been edited by RODALCO (edited 05-24-2006).]

Whats the similarity between our poco and a flamingo?

They can both shove their bills.......

Ours is Electricité de France.
State Monopoly.
Due to be privatised, sometime, ha ha.
Also owns the gas monopoly and also many of Britain's privatised pocos and gasos.


Alan

Austria: APG (Austrian Power Grid) controls the distribution of electrical energy and owns the high voltage (110, 220 and 380 kV) lines. The old local power companies still own the LV and MV distribution but have to share it with the competitors. They also install the meters, regardles of who the customer is paying his bill to.
Basically it's one PoCo per state and bigger cities have one too.
Here it's Wien Energie (former Wiener Stadtwerke, Vienna Municipial Works). They offer electricity, gas and district heating. Two other members of the group (owned 100% by the city of Vienna) are Vienna undertaking and Vienna Lines (public transport).



PS: the i dot is the Stadtwerke logo

Progress Energy.

And a leftover from the New Deal electrification program of the great depression, North West Rural Electrical Cooperative.

Ours was originally Public Service Electric and Gas Co., but nowadays the corporate name is simply PSEG. Guess that eliminates any quaint concept of public service, right?



www.pseg.com

Now in the process of merging with Excelon energy...


[This message has been edited by NJwirenut (edited 05-29-2006).]

Ours is SPPCo, or "Sierra-Pacific Power Company."

First prize has to go to a neighboring utility... SMUD. (Sacramento Municipality Utility District)

Hamilton Ontario used to have
"HHES"... " Hamilton Hydro Electric System".. But in the past years they have amalgamated with the surrounding smaller towns ( Ancaster, Dundas, Stoney Creek) as well as the city of St Catharines ( Just outside Niagara Falls, to now form the company "HORIZON UTILITIES"... Oddly enough, they are responsible for the reading and billing of everyones water and water meters!
Who would have thought water and electricty could mix..

A.D

Florida Power and Light here
www.fpl.com

Our original poco was called West Kootenay Power. In the past 10 years it was bought out by Utilicorp, then sold to Aquila, and most recently to FortisBC.

When it was West Kootenay Power, our rates were among the lowest in North America. Each one of these sales of the company cost a small fortune (changing names/logos on trucks, etc) and now our rates are at par, if not higher, than other poco's.

Ours used to be Baltimore Gas & Electric Co.
Then they were bought by Constellation Energy now it,s known as BG&E. Now Constellation is trying to merge (BUY) Florida Power and Light and as of July 1 We will be hit with a 72% price increase.

We have a government owned (aka Crown Corporation) here in Manitoba Canada.

An interesting fact is Manitoba Hydro has one of the longest DC transmission lines in the world (about 895 km) to bring power down from the northern dams to the customers in the south of Manitoba. Also according to Manitoba Hydro they charge the cheapest rates in Canada for electricity.

They have recently put out a RFI for private companies to supply them with wind power.

Here is some info from their About Us section on their web site www.hydro.mb.ca :

Manitoba Hydro is the province's major energy utility, headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba. We serve 505 883 electric customers throughout Manitoba and 253 631 gas customers in various communities throughout southern Manitoba. Virtually all electricity generated by the provincial Crown Corporation is from self-renewing water power. We are the major distributor of natural gas in the province. The Corporation's capital assets-in-service at original cost exceed $10 billion, making us one of the largest energy and natural gas utilities in Canada.

My POCO here is Southern California Edison, or SCE.
http://www.sce.com


Close neighbor utility is Los Angeles Dept. Of Water and Power (LADWP or more commonly, DWP.) I've heard it pronounced as "dwhip".


LOL Reno, I used to live in Sacramento and found that to be the weirdest acronym for a utility I'd ever heard of.

Kinda like how Toyota has their "Toyota Racing Developement" TRD (snicker.)

Anyone else have a funny utility nearby?

edited to add link

[This message has been edited by mxslick (edited 05-22-2006).]

ours was called I&M,
which stood for
Indiana & some other state.....


now it is called AEP..
..American Electric something or other....

but we know it as ....
....Always Electrical Problems

The last few years it's become quite confusing here, with different companies dealing with different aspects of service and several takeovers and name changes.

It used to be just Eastern Electricity, a throwback to the days of the old Eastern Electricity Board. Then the contracting company became TXU Energi (sic), which is part of the Powergen group. That only lasted for a year or so, now all the bills just come from Powergen itself. Powergen is a "company of e-on".

That's not the end of the story though. Meter installation, changing, and reading is contracted out to Siemens, so they're the guys who come round every 6 months or so to take the readings.

Line maintenance, repairs, and new service installs (except the meter!) are handled by 24-Seven , which is now owned by EDFenergy . That's owned by Electricité de France, which Alan mentioned above.

Of course, that's how it was yesterday. It may have changed again by now!

Edited to fix link.



[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 05-23-2006).]

HECO (Hawaiian Electric Company)

We have; www.nstaronline.com

Primadonna Gas & Electric
"If it wont install itself, we won't touch it!"
http://www.pge.com/

well we have several co-ops,the one i'm on is called mid-carolina electric co-op.we also have south carolina electric & gas(S.C.E.& G.), duke power & carolina power & light(C.P.& L.). the co-ops are part of the santee cooper system which supplies ea co-op substation. plus numerous municpal power companies.

[This message has been edited by circuit man (edited 05-22-2006).]

Used to be everyone had the typical names like above. Now with de-regulation, they like to come up with names like "Reliant".

Yeah, right!

In the old days they were HL&P, which stood for Houston Power and Light (or Houston Looting and Plunder).

Also, in addition to SCE & LADWP that slick mentioned above, So Californians might have
San Diego Gas & Electric, City of Anaheim, City of Vernon, City of Glendale, City of Pasadena, or City of Burbank as their utility. There are probably even more.

Thanks for the hilarious links, Paul!

"What to do in a Blackout-click here."

Just when you need it, the computer don't woik!

and "The page does not exist." - complete with the EDF logo.
Bien sur, it exists, Messieurs EDF, it's just blanc!

Oops! It apperas that the link got mangled somehow. It should work now.........


This same topic came up in a telecoms group a short while ago about telephone company names. When it was The Bell Telephone Co. of Pennsylvania or The Moosejaw, Montana Telephone Cooperative everyone knew who they were and what they did.

Now we have weird names like VeriZon and Embarq.

is the poco where I live now...

I've also worked around these


San Diego Gas & Electric









and a few more....

Thats all I can think of for now

Ours is Hydro One



It used to be Ontario Hydro


Town PUCs electricity divisions merged into a corporation called Westario Power.

Telephone is Hurontel, formerly Huron and Kinloss Municipal Telephone.

A neigboring phone company was Bruce Municipal Telephone System, now Bruce Telecom.

Note: Hurontel started as a municipal utility , and then changed to a co-op. Bruce Telecom went the other way, from co-op to municipal utility.



[This message has been edited by classicsat (edited 05-26-2006).]

We have 2 in my area. One is Henry County REMC and has been since 1938. It was the first rural cooperative in the USA to repay it's REA bond. The other utility started out as Public Service Indiana then was just PSI then merged with Cincinati Power and Gas to become Cinergy and this year sold out to yet another company to become Duke Energy.

OK Ray,
From my ex-employer:

Here is the Poco for my area:



For what it's worth, I hate this logo. Why didn't they capitalize the "N" and the "G"??? Maybe they're trying to portray the image of being a kinder, gentler PoCo?

[This message has been edited by CTwireman (edited 05-28-2006).]

Ours is a municipal-owned utility, who I work for. http://ljelectric.netfirms.com/

We purchase our power from MEAN (Nebraska). and it is wheeled to us by Tri-State Generation, in Colorado.

Surrounding areas are fed by Aquila, Southeast Colorado Power, and San Isabel Electric

Rick Miell

I also live in PG&E land, but I used to live in Portlad, OR. The funny thing there was, the PoCo was also PGE, for Portland General Electric.




[This message has been edited by jraef (edited 06-05-2006).]

[This message has been edited by jraef (edited 06-05-2006).]

[This message has been edited by jraef (edited 06-05-2006).]

Hey Randy,
That Surprise Valley sounds like an interesting place.

LOL, It was interesting enough just getting there! This is the town I was in...