The City of La Junta Electric Department is responsible for the organization and field management of electrical projects and for implementing measures to increase the City’s effectiveness.
The City of La Junta is a member of the Arkansas River Power Authority (ARPA) and through this association purchases power from ARPA.
The Electric Department is responsible for maintaining all of the power lines and transformers within the City of La Junta.
10 Things you might not know about Power Restoration
- We need you. When your power goes out, it might be just at your home or a small section of a neighborhood. There is a chance we may not know about it, and no one has reported it. We rely on you to let us know if your power is out.
- Our employees might be affected, too. Because La Junta is a local cooperative owned by the members we serve, our employees are local too. They are your neighbors, friends, and familiar community volunteers. When you’re without power, our people might be too.
- It’s a team effort. Every one of La Junta’s Electric Department employees is working to get your power restored as soon as possible. Our member services representatives are taking your calls, engineers and field staff are surveying the damage, our crews are clearing hazards, dispatchers are organizing crews and communicators are keeping everyone informed of progress or potential dangers. When your power goes out, we all work together as quickly and safely as possible to get you back to normal.
- We assess the situation first. Every outage is different, and we don’t know how dangerous it is or what equipment might need to be replaced When responding to outages, we first need to see what happened, then figure out what materials we need and a plan for how to fix the problem(s) without comprising electric flow for the rest of our members.
- Restoration is normally prioritized by the largest number of members we can get back on in the shortest amount of time. Our crews focus on responding first to public safety issues and critical services like hospitals. Then we complete work that impacts the largest number of people first.
- Our employees face many dangers. Besides working around high-voltage electricity, our crews are on alert for weather elements, falling trees, and fast-moving cars (If you ever drive past one of our vehicles, please do so slowly.)
- Blinking Lights can be a good thing. Some folks mistake blinking lights for outages, but these “blinks” are important because they indicate our equipment worked and prevented a possible outage likely caused by wayward animals or stray tree limbs on the lines.
- You need a backup plan. We do our best to help those who need it, but if you depend on electricity for life support purposes, you must have a backup plan – remember, we don’t always know how long restoration efforts will take.
- Our employees have to work safely and rest. Our employees work very long hours during major outage restoration, but the safety of our employees is our number one priority and we do send crews home for rest periods when needed throughout major extended outages. Even if you don’t see crews out working during this time, it is likely that our Operations Management Team is still hard at work procuring materials and making plans for the quickest restoration possible.
- Sometimes it’s a waiting game. Our portion of the power grid is connected to other electric utilities, and we maintain positive relationships with power providers interconnected to our system. If our outage is due to an issue from their feed into our system, we must let them do their repairs and be mindful of what they’re going through to fix it. We do our best to avoid power disruptions, but they are inevitable from time to time. If the lights go out, know that your co-op team is working as quickly and safely as possible to restore power.
If you experience an outage, please let us know by reporting it at (719) 384-2611 or (719) 384-2525. While it might be easy to comment on social media that you have an outage, calling us is always the best method as we do not have staff available 24/7 to monitor all social media sources.
Electric Rates
If you require more information about rates and billing than is contained in the rate schedule, please contact the Utilities Office at (719) 384-2546.
Net Metering Information & Example
Utility Rates