Willmar Municipal Utilities has been designated a Reliable Public Power Provider (RP₃) and has earned three additional awards for safety and reliability from national and state organizations. The American Public Power Association awarded Willmar Municipal Utilities with the RP₃ Diamond designation, a Certificate of Excellence in Reliability and first place in the Safety Award of Excellence. From Minnesota Safety Council, Willmar Municipal Utilities earned the Meritorious Award in Occupational Safety.

The RP₃ Diamond designation recognizes public power utilities that demonstrate proficiency in four key disciplines: reliability, safety, workplace development, and system improvement. Criteria include sound business practices and a utility-wide commitment to safe and reliable delivery of electricity. Willmar Municipal Utilities is one of 278 public power Utilities nationwide that hold the RP₃ designation. This designation is valid for three years and this is the second time that Willmar Municipal Utilities has been recognized. “This is a great honor,” said John Harren, General Manager of Willmar Municipal Utilities. “We take a lot of pride in the work we do to power our community. It is nice to be recognized as among the ‘best of the best’ on a national level.”

The Certificate of Excellence in Reliability is awarded to utilities based on their measurement of System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI), which measures the length of an outage. In 2019, Willmar Municipal Utilities was in the top 25% of utilities and the average outage lasted 4.595 minutes.

The Safety Award of Excellence is for utilities with 60,000-109,999 worker-hours of annual worker exposure. The incidence rate, used to judge entries, is based on the number of work-related reportable injuries or illnesses and the number of worker-hours during 2019, as defined by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

The Meritorious Award in Occupational Safety from Minnesota Safety Council is given to utilities that show incidence rates better than the industry average for at least three years. Willmar Municipal Utilities also received the Meritorious Achievement Award for exemplary workplace safety efforts in 2018.

“These awards are made possible because Willmar Municipal Utilities team members work together in reliability and safety,” said Michelle Marotzke, Safety Officer. “Every day our team works together to make sure that public power is reliable and safe for our community.”