Electric Co-op Today

Ramping up the war on copper thieves, one Florida co-op has designed and built a device that’s giving one of its substations a Star Wars feel.

Withlacoochee River EC designed and built this box to help catch copper thieves in its substations. (Photo By: Withlacoochee River EC)

Mounted atop a pole at Withlacoochee River Electric Cooperative’s Heritage Pines substation is a box with several components.

“The first thing we have is passive infrared detection,” explained Frank Tomkow, manager of communications at the Dade City-based co-op. Three detectors are mounted on each side, toward the bottom.

“Right above that you’ll see four cameras. Those cameras are connected to a network video recorder. And above that you’ll see four 500-watt lights. Also, on the front door, toward the top, you’ll see a siren with a little red strobe on top of that.”

Tomkow and electronic technicians Rob Cardinal and Gary Steele designed and built the box in-house.

“We control it through our SCADA system and we can turn it on and off when our crews go in,” Tomkow said. An indicator on the front lights up when it’s armed.

It might look complicated, but part of the brilliance is the simplicity.

“If someone goes in [to the substation] without notifying us, it’ll send us an alarm. It’ll also tell us if it’s lost power,” Tomkow said. Withlacoochee’s control center, staffed 24/7, receives a signal, just as it would from a breaker when there’s an outage. Employees can then see what is going on.

Withlacoochee began testing the device in late September and it has been working fine. Concerns about possible false alarms from birds and animals proved unwarranted.

After about another week of testing, Withlacoochee plans to build more of the devices. The co-op has 44 substations, but will start deployment at 10 that Tomkow described as being “the worst as far as copper theft.”

“We tried to design this to be practical and effective,” Tomkow told ECT.coop. Design and production costs ran to about $5,500—small potatoes compared to what copper theft costs.

“To date we’re pushing close to a quarter of a million dollars in copper theft losses,” Tomkow said.

Co-op officials are duly impressed with the device.

“We’ve got the best in the business,” said David Lambert, Withlacoochee’s manager of member relations. “They’re always thinking of new, innovative ways to save the co-op money through technical advances.”

For co-ops that are interested in the device, Lambert welcomed inquiries: “I think if a co-op came to us, we would share the specifications with them.”

Related content: Co-op Cameras Nab Copper Suspects

Tags: Copper Theft, Crime, Local Initiatives