JACKSON CENTER — Jackson Center Municipal Electric System has received national recognition for achieving exceptional electric reliability in 2017.

The recognition comes from the American Public Power Association, a trade group that represents more than 2,000 not-for-profit, community-owned electric utilities.

The association tracks outage and restoration data and then compares the data to national statistics tracked by the U.S. Energy Information Administration for all types of electric utilities.

“This recognition helps demonstrate public power’s commitment to reliable electric service,” said the association’s senior vice president of engineering services, Michael Hyland.

Public power has a strong track record of reliability, said Hyland. Nationwide, the average public power customer has lights out for less than half the time of other types of utilities.

“We are proud to receive this recognition,” said Bruce Metz, administrator of the village of Jackson Center. “It is a testament to the hard work of all our staff to ensure that the lights stay on for all our customers.”

Metz stated that he is most proud of the utility’s average service availability index rating. ASAI is defined as a measure of the average availability of the sub-transmission and distribution systems that service customers. The average ASAI for utilities within the village’s customer size class is 99.9718 percent and that Jackson Center Municipal Electric System’s ASAI is 99.9996 percent.

Metz also noted the systems customer average interruption duration index rating. CAIDI is defined as the average duration in minutes of an interruption experienced by customers during a specific time frame. The average CAIDI for utilities within the village’s customer size class is 125.9704 minutes and that the Jackson Center Municipal Electric System’s CAIDI is 37.5 minutes.