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Richmond Power & Light board authorizes truck bid, reviews 2025 reliability showing high uptime
Summary
The Richmond Power & Light board authorized staff to seek bids for a Class 7 dump-body truck included in the 2026 capital budget and reviewed 2025 reliability metrics (system reliability ~99.9851%), outage causes (trees, weather, equipment), and animal-related incidents.
At a Feb. 2 Richmond Power & Light (RP&L) board meeting, staff asked for and received board authorization to solicit bids for a 2026 (or newer) Class 7 extended-cab truck with a dump body consistent with the approved capital budget.
The board also reviewed RP&L’s 2025 reliability report. The presenter (identified in the meeting as Tony Foster) said system reliability improved to about 99.9851% for 2025 and summarized top outage causes as tree-related events, weather and equipment failures. Foster recounted a transformer failure that left 358 customers out of service for an extended period and a June storm that affected more than 2,000 customers and resulted in roughly 171,000 lost customer-minutes.
Foster noted animal contacts (squirrels and other wildlife) remained a recurring source of breaker operations and outages; he said the utility continues to invest in tree trimming, animal guards and other maintenance to improve reliability.
The board approved the motion to advertise bids for the truck and heard the reliability briefing; the meeting adjourned after routine questions.
