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Don Gronning
NEWPORT – Chris Jones has been serving as interim General Manager for the Pend Oreille Public utility District since February. It’s a step up from his previous job as Operations Manager and earlier job as a lineman.
The job requires a long-range view of the PUD, says Jones, 53, who has made a 31-year career with the public utility. He started in 1994 as a lineman. He rose through the ranks and was named Director of Operations in 2010 and interim General Manager in February.
“One thing I’ve learned in this position, is that I no longer think of short-term things,” he said in an interview with The Miner after he was named fulltime General Manager July 16. “Everything is long-term.”
Jones brings a different background than the last two GMs, John Janney and Collin Willenbrock.
Janney was a veteran public power executive with financial expertise. Willenbrock was a young attorney.
Jones is a former union lineman. He knows PUD operations inside and out. But running the organization has been a learning process, he admits.
Like previous GMs, he sees the county as lucky to have public power and is committed to the retail customer. But in a changing energy market, that requires long term thinking.
There are times when the PUD is focused on the short term, when dealing with power outages, for instance. But it’s long-term vision that takes most of his attention now, as the industry deals with a growing demand for power.
“This position is long-term planning and setting it up for the future,” he says. Jones says the PUD has been around since the 1930s and his focus is on improving it for the next generation.
One of the things the PUD is planning is a new Bare Mountain substation, to be located near the intersection of Hwy.
20 and Hwy. 211.
The substation is currently expected to cost between $15 million and $18 million. The PUD will use existing cash reserves and won’t sell bonds on the project. Jones says the plan is to have it constructed in the summer of 2027.
“Right now, we’re out to bid on the transformers,” he says. He said the 115Kv breakers have been ordered.
“But they’re 100 weeks out.”
While he’s hoping the substation will be built by the end of 2027, that depends on some long lead time items that the PUD is waiting to get the bids back on.
The PUD is already making plans for another needed substation, maybe around Dalkena.
“The next substation will either be in Dalkena or near Blueslide,” Jones says, meaning mid-county. “We will wait until engineering does its assessment of where that will be.”
He says the need is in mid-county largely because of the problems with transferring power in a long county.
There is a transfer station in Newport on Pine Street and the next one is in Cusick.
Jones says that when one of those substations is taken offline for testing or maintenance, the PUD isn’t able to feed Safran, the aircraft cabin parts manufacturing company located near McDonalds in Newport. “We have to call up Safran and say you’ve got to shut down. Otherwise, we can’t feed the rest of the town.”
Jones says the PUD wants to get to a position where one component of the system can be taken offline and the system still keeps fully operating.
“That’s where a utility wants to be and we have not been there in a very long time,” he says. That means building substations.
Partnering with other utilities on battery storage or generating energy is something that might be possible in the future, he says.
“All we’re doing right now is just exploring,” he says. “We’re exploring the industry. I don’t want to say the PUD is going to put in batteries because the chances of us putting in batteries are very, very slim, because they are expensive.”
Jones says while the energy demands in the region are growing substantially, he remains optimistic.
“That’s kinda my personality,” he says.
He says the PUD is in a really good spot for the future.
“Past general managers and past commissioners have worked really hard to make sure we’re in that good spot,” he says. He says running the PUD like a business is one of the keys. That goes with looking to the future.
“We need to be looking 50 years down the road because that’s how long we’re going to be here,” he says. “That’s the most important part. To set this PUD up, not for this generation, but set it up for the next generation.”
Jones says he wants the PUD to be in better shape when he leaves than when he first started working here. Still, he says that his time working for the PUD is limited. He and his wife decided long ago that they wanted to be retired by age 55. She retired from the Newport School District this year.
“I told the board I would stay at least four years,” he says. “Four years from when I became interim (GM).”
That leaves him more than three and a half years. He says if he’s happy, he’ll work longer.
“If I get down there at four years and I want to stay another year or two, I’ll stay a year or two,” he says. “I’m in no hurry to go anywhere but I’m also not going to work until I’m 70.”
