Brunswick Electric is a distribution electric cooperative, which means we don’t generate our own power; we purchase wholesale power and deliver it to you, our members, as reliably as possible.

As a member of Brunswick Electric you probably hear us talk about reliability more than anything else, and that’s because it affects you so directly. Reliability is the amount of time your power is on, and we strive to maintain a greater than 99 percent reliability rating. 

We do this several ways. First, through a proactive maintenance program designed to stop problems before they start. For example, we have crews who change out aging equipment before it can become a problem, and right-of-way clearing crews who cut back tree limbs and remove vegetation to minimize their impact on power lines during storms. But even the best maintenance program can’t stop all outages, and we often use technology to restore your power as quickly as possible.

When crews locate the source of an outage they quickly identify which homes are affected; and because of grid automation, homes and businesses can oftentimes be moved from the affected circuit to an unaffected circuit through a technique we call backfeeding. This allows your power to be restored quickly while giving line crews time to determine the problem and work to correct it. Once work on the affected equipment is complete, your location will be moved back to the correct circuit, but you most likely won’t even notice the change.

Backfeeding isn’t possible when the source of the outage is a transmission line because that outage is beyond our control, but it works well when the problem is located on BEMC’s distribution lines.