LAURINBURG —The city of Laurinburg has received national recognition for achieving exceptional electric reliability in 2020.

The recognition comes from the American Public Power Association, a trade group that represents more than 2,000 not-for-profit, community-owned electric utilities. APPA helps electric utilities track power outage and restoration data through its subscription-based eReliability Tracker service.

Once per year, APPA’s Reliability Team compares this data to national statistics tracked by the U.S. Energy Information Administration for all types of electric utilities.

“Public power utilities have proven their commitment to serving their community by continuing to lead the nation in reliability,” said Alex Hofmann, APPA’s vice-president of Technical and Operations Services. “These utilities are the best of the best when it comes to keeping the lights on in their communities.”

Nationwide, the average public power customer has their lights out for less than half the amount of time that customers of other types of utilities do.

“We are proud to receive this recognition. It is a testament to the hard work of all our staff to ensure that we keep Laurinburg powered,” said Jason Lighthall, Electric Utilities director at the city of Laurinburg.

APPA has compared the city of Laurinburg’s utilities reliability data compiled through the eReliability Tracker to the national reliability data collected by the Energy Information Administration. According to this comparison, the city of Laurinburg is in the top quartile (25%) of utilities for System Average Interruption Duration Index based on the EIA data in 2015 -2019, thereby qualifying the city of Laurinburgfor the 2020 Certificate of Excellence in Reliability.

For information on the City of Laurinburg and its commitment to reliability, visit the Electric Operations section of the Public Works page at https://www.laurinburg.org/public-works/.