FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE — April 19, 2017
Vancouver, Wash. – On April 11, Northwest Public Power Association (NWPPA) presented Fall River Electric Cooperative’s Dave Peterson with the NWPPA Award for Excellence in Engineering or Operations at the association’s 2017 Engineering & Operations Conference in Reno, Nev. The award is given to an engineer and/or operations person who has made contributions to the utility industry in the engineering or operations area. Also known as the Milton Hunt McGuire Award, named after the longtime manager of the Electrical Department of the City of McMinnville, it was first presented in 1947 and is considered NWPPA’s most prestigious award for a utility employee working in the areas of engineering or operations. Because of the high caliber of requirements to receive the award, it is not presented every year; the last presentation of the Milton Hunt McGuire award was in 2014.
After completing his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical and electronic engineering technology from Montana State University in Bozeman in 1985, Peterson began his long and storied career with Fall River Electric in Ashton, Idaho. Having started as a staff engineer, he worked his way up through the ranks to his current engineering manager position. Peterson also completed a lineman apprenticeship in 1993 and NRECA’s Manager’s Internship Program in 1999.
During his more than three decades at Fall River, Peterson has been an integral member of key projects and improvements; for example, he led the building of the Chester Hydroelectric Project; assumed the management and responsibility for all of Fall River’s hydro operations in 2014; led the installation and conversion of Fall River to AMI meters; oversaw the installation of the utility’s fiber optics backbone system that connected all of Fall River’s offices and 15 of Fall River’s substations; led significant improvements in Fall River’s GIS mapping systems, outage management systems, and work order estimates; and managed the team responsible for the automation of the work order and mapping processes.