Clay Electric Cooperative in Keystone Heights, FL serves its expansive service territory (the utility’s nearly 200,000 members receive power from 14,000 miles of distribution and transmission lines) without much fanfare … on most days, that is.  

But serving parts of 15 North Florida counties often puts them in the path of severe storm activity. In 2024, the utility was hit by three named storms, Hurricane Debby, Helene and Milton impacting between 20 and 50 percent of the cooperative’s member base. 

“Helene was probably the worst because it was so slow over our service territory,” Brian Stroup, Applications Support Manager at Clay Electric, recalls. “We couldn’t get out and respond fast enough.” 

But one thing the utility could do was lean into its AMI and OMS systems to support restoration efforts and member communications. Having put in place a series of process improvements to better utilize data and bring field networks online faster during the restoration process, the utility has experienced great improvements in outage duration and number of members impacted. 

“AMI was essential in our restoration activities and a key differentiator in improving our restoration times,” said Brent Richardson, Clay Electric’s Chief Information Officer. “As much as outage restoration is largely a reactionary event, AMI with proactive notifications has improved member satisfaction enabling the cooperative to be more responsive to our members.” 

Check out this video to learn more about AMI’s role in resiliency and storm management.