Avista Ready To Ramp Up Infrastructure Replacement Program

摘要

Headquartered in Spokane, WA with a service area of more than 30,000 square miles in eastern Washington, northern Idaho and parts of southern and eastern Oregon, Avista Utilities is embarking on a 20-year program to systematically replace 714 miles of plastic main piping and install transition tubing at the identified steel tees at a cost of about $10 million a year. The investor-owned utility serves about 323,000 natural gas customers and another 158,000 electric customers. In this interview, Mike Faulkenberry, a 20-year veteran with Avista and its director of Natural Gas, tells Pipeline & Gas Journal readers about the company's "reliability forecasting" for replacing aging pipe. He also touches on some of the scheduling considerations - such as pavement moratoriums for newly paved roads - that must be considered along the way. He adds that Avista expects the lag time between its infrastructure improvements and cost recovery to show improvement, once the program is fully ramped up.