Fault automation is one reason why members may experience a blink or brief outage at their home. However, this brief interruption is a sign that you could have experienced a much longer outage.
Fault automation isolates the fault, opens a feeder breaker, then restores power by closing at a normally open point to tie the two feeders together.
“A member still took an outage, but it was only for 10 seconds or a minute, not several hours,” said Merek Brister, engineer. “YFA gets the lights back on.”
The system prevents the Co-op from having to send line technicians to an outage to first assess the situation before any switching is done. The switching is done in seconds with the new system.
According to Assistant General Manager Ryan Brown, the YFA system reduced power outages by 39,000 hours through the first six months of 2026.
The Co-op initially started the YFA system on the outer edges of the service area. It was first implemented near Huntington, east of Lufkin in Angelina County. It is strategically deployed across the system following detailed analysis.