Greg Thompson, Community Relations Program Manager for Central Maine Power (CMP), delivered a detailed presentation to the Brunswick Town Council on CMP's operations, infrastructure, storm response procedures, and ongoing reliability improvements. The presentation covered CMP's service territory, equipment, circuit maps for Brunswick, tree trimming practices, and specific projects such as the replacement of the Section 31 transmission line. The session included a question-and-answer period with council members.
Alright, so again, Greg Thompson, Central Main Power Company, program manager, community relations. I've been with Central Main Power for about 21 years. Working closely with the chief, working with our crews, started in safety, both working public facing as well as for internal for our crews to make sure they were doing things the right way and not going to get hurt. Progressed through my career in 2016. Was manager there for about seven years, which seems like a really short time, but it was quite a while. Went through probably one of the worst storms this area's had in a long time in 2017. And made some mistakes, learned a lot, but was happy to work alongside a lot of communities like Brunswick to restore the system and bring back as fast as we could. So like I said, a lot of history, a lot of um ties to the area. Um so very happy to be here and to present to you. And what I've been asked to do, and I I've done this a few times, is to talk about storm response in your community. Now really we're gonna talk about storm response. We're gonna touch on some other things too. I'm gonna go high level. We're talking 10,000 foot. Um I deal with this day in, day out. Um so I can get really down in the weeds. I'm gonna try not to do that. I'm gonna try to keep this to an hour. I got a clock in front of me, so I can try to keep us relatively on time. If you have a question, stop me. Um in the room. If there's something that comes through, um I can certainly try to answer it, or if I can't get an answer, then I will get one back to the group. So we're gonna talk about a few things. We're gonna talk about who Central Main Power is and what we do, um, what our function is, infrastructure in your community, storm response, storm safety and preparedness, FAQs, and then questions. But like I said, feel free to answer questions anytime. And I do roam around, so if I'm moving too much, just let me know and I will certainly try to stop. So Central Main Power Company. We deliver more than 9 billion kilowatt hours of electricity yearly to more than 600,000 retail electric customers in central and southern Maine. Essentially two-thirds of the state from the Canadian border all the way down through Belfast, um all the way along the coast. We serve about just in the Brunswick area, about 20 islands. We have another 10 to 15 as you go further. Um we actually have a boat stationed out of Portland for Peaks Island and some of the others, and we actually have brought it up here a couple times. Um says 675,000 electric electricity customers. We're up over 679,000. Um 11,000 square miles of service area. 250 uh excuse me, 25,000 miles of power lines would circle encircle the earth. That's what we have 200 linemen, about another 600 support staff responsible for day in, day out, outside of storms. We have over 125 years of experience and expertise in delivery of safe, reliable power. So again, we deliver the power. And I want to make sure that everybody understands that. I still get a lot of well, when you make the power, we don't make power. Through deregulation in the 90s and 2000s, we have been told we cannot do anything with generation. So when you see anything that says solar, we cannot generate. Nothing. That does beg the question. It is on your bill. That's a legislature and PUC mandate. They only wanted one utility bill, so the supply and delivery are on one bill. They call it the CMP bill. It's actually your electric bill.