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Recognizing Linemen From Across Our Service Territory

Along with the Sagle headquarters, Northern Lights has 3 crews stationed at outlying areas throughout its service territory. Map courtesy of NLI

Northern Lights, Inc. currently employs 25 full-time journeymen linemen. While the majority are based near our Sagle, Idaho, headquarters, 9 linemen are stationed in 3 outlying areas: Bonners Ferry and Priest Lake, Idaho, and Trout Creek, Montana.

Each of these communities has a local, dedicated line crew, warehouse, and stocked materials and equipment, allowing our linemen to serve members throughout Northern Lights’ expansive service territory.

The day-to-day responsibilities of outlying area linemen can look a little different from those based at headquarters. In addition to building, maintaining, and repairing power lines, these crews take care of nearly everything needed to keep their local operations running. This includes maintaining and cleaning the warehouse and keeping materials stocked.

There is also a difference in how the crews work together. Line crews based in Sagle rotate periodically, giving linemen the opportunity to work alongside different co-workers throughout the year. In the outlying areas, crews generally consist of the same linemen working together day after day. This creates close-knit teams that know their local electric system—and their communities—extremely well.

As a rural electric cooperative, it’s important to us to have linemen who live and work in communities they serve, are familiar with the local terrain and electric system, and are nearby when outages or other issues occur.

Although these crews operate in their respective locations, they are part of a larger team. When an outage or project requires additional personnel or equipment, crews from headquarters travel to assist. Because we operate 24/7/365, whenever local crews need additional help or are unavailable to respond after hours, linemen from other areas can provide support.

Regardless of where an outage occurs, members should always report it through the outage hotline by phone or text at (866) 665-4837 or by using the SmartHub app. This applies throughout our entire service territory, including Bonners Ferry, Priest Lake, and Trout Creek.

Wherever they are based, all Northern Lights linemen play an important role in providing our members with safe, reliable, and affordable electric service. That’s the power of local, cooperative service.

Kristin MettkeNorthern Lights Engineering and Operations Manager Kristin Burge is an electrical engineer and has worked in the electric utility industry for most of her career.