In a Wednesday meeting Kingfisher City Manager Dave Slezickey described as “productive,” Kingfisher city leadership and representatives of the Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority talked with OG&E representatives about recent power outages.

In addition to Slezickey, Kingfisher Mayor Roxie Alexander, Community Development Director Jon Friesen and Electric Superintendent Mark Gambill participated in the meeting in the Kingfisher Chamber of Commerce boardroom.

OMPA’s General Manager Dave Osborn and Jim McAvoy, engineering director, also attended, along with OG&E’s economic development director, goernment affairs director, community affairs director, distribution director and members of the utility’s engineering staff.

The discussion revolved around improving communications between the city and OG&E while keeping OMPA in the loop during transmission outages.

Kingfisher staff members described how members of the community and local busineses were impacted during extended OG&E transmission outages on Nov. 19, Oct. 28 and Aug. 8.

By comparison, Kingfisher Electric experienced only one distribution system outage so far in 2022, a weather-related interruption on Feb. 3.

OG&E representatives shared plans for a project early in the first quarter of 2023 to replace a pole, switch and relay near their Okarche substation that has caused issues with the transmission feed into Kingfisher.

OG&E is also working on plans to replace the 69 kV line from El Reno to Doverconverting to a 138kV line in the near future.

Acting as the Kingfisher Public Works Authority board of trustees, city commissioners already have approved updates at Kingfi sher’s substations to prepare for OG&E’s planned enhancements.

Discussions at Wednesday’s meeting also included improving direct communication between the city and OG&E in the event of a future outage, and including OMPA officials in the communication loop.

“We will also be working with OG&E to try and coordinate our meter data to be included in their outage tracker, so community members will have direct access to OG&E updates,” Slezickey said.

Currently, Kingfisher homes and businesses aren’t included on OG&E’s online tracker since they technically aren’t customers of the utility.

“It was a productive meeting to open discussions for better communication,” Slezickey said.

“There are numerous regulatory changes impacting the electric industry, and everyone in the industry from generation to transmission to distribution iscommitted to quality reliable services.