The Finepoint Circuit Breaker Test & Maintenance Training Conference serves anyone in the industry who operates, maintains, or manages substation and switchgear assets, particularly the rural electric utilities. Dale Thompson, substation construction and maintenance superintendent for the Minnkota Power Cooperative has attended the conference five times in the past nine years.

Thompson is responsible for the maintenance on all of the transmission and distribution substation equipment at Minnkota, a regional generation and transmission cooperative serving 11 member-owner distribution cooperatives. Minnkota's service area of 34,500 square miles is located in eastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota.

Finepoint’s program is geared toward the equipment that Minnkota owns, according to Thompson. “It is an excellent program,” he said.

Minnkota sends several people to the conference each year, he said. In fact, so far this conference is the only one Thompson will have attended this year.

“One of the best things about the conference is meeting the other people from across the country,” he said. “The vendors are great, also.”

In fact, one year Thompson and his colleagues from Minnkota discovered (from a vendor) “sources for old parts of a breaker that we didn’t know existed”

Thompson said he will attend the conference in the future. “It’s a great service to the electrical industry.”