Haskins, Ohio
Celebrating a century of electric service
Published April 2019
Located in Wood County, Haskins was incorporated in 1869 and named for Whitcomb Haskins, a distant relative of U.S. President Franklin Pierce and a past owner of the land upon which Haskins was built. At the close of the Civil War, the village was a thriving settlement and soon after, the discovery of oil led Haskins to be at the center of one of the greatest fortune hunts in the nation at that time.
The oil boom days were over by 1910, and by 1917, electricity came to Haskins. The town council appointed a committee to get estimates for wiring the village for electricity. The winning bid of $325 led to the construction of wires and poles to distribute electricity.
Energy
The Village of Haskins Municipal Light and Power was established in 1918 and currently serves more than 550 meters, mostly residential, with a system peak of approximately 1,650 kilowatts (kW).
The local grain elevator is the village’s largest commercial electric customer. And it was the public power system’s reliability that led Titan Mechanical, a provider of facility and utility construction services, to choose to settle in Haskins.
Community
Centrally located between Bowling Green and Toledo, Haskins was an ideal location for the area’s railroad system, a piece of heritage still embraced by residents today. The village’s most popular destination, the Mail Pouch Saloon, is named as a tribute to the history of the mail pouches that were picked up and dropped off from the side of a moving train, using nothing more than a hook and practice.
Between the 2000 and 2010 censuses, the village saw its population nearly double. With a current population of 1,188, Haskins boasts an idyllic small-town setting with steady growth – a trend expected to continue.
Safety
Haskins Electric was recognized for its excellent record of safety at the 2018 AMP/OMEA Conference. The village was presented with an AMP Hard Hat Safety Award and an AMP Transmission and Distribution Safety Award for no time loss due to injury. Haskins also participates in a number of AMP programs and projects including:
- AMP Combustion Turbine, six gas turbine distributed generation units located at three sites around Ohio that supply peaking power
- AMP Fremont Energy Center, a natural gas combined cycle facility that provides energy and capacity
- AMP Solar Phase II, AMP is working with a third party entity for the development, construction and operation of up to 80 megawatts (MW) of new solar electric generation facilities
- Blue Creek Wind Farm, a 304-MW wind farm located in northwest Ohio near Van Wert consisting of 152 turbines, each with a capacity of 2 MW
- Meldahl/Greenup Hydro Project, which includes the run-of-the-river hydroelectric generating facility at the Captain Anthony Meldahl Dam on the Ohio River and the existing generating facility at the Greenup Dam, also on the Ohio River
- Municipal Energy Services Agency (MESA), which provides member communities a source of technical assistance including planning, design and engineering, field services and training assistance
- Mutual Aid, a network of municipal electric systems that assist each other when utility emergencies occur that are too widespread to be handled by one system alone
- New York Power Authority (NYPA), providing hydroelectricity generated by the Niagara and St. Lawrence rivers
- OMEGA JV2, a joint venture that owns three gas turbine peaking generation units and 34 diesel units with a subscribed capacity of 134.096 MW at sites across Ohio
- OMEGA JV5, a joint venture that operates a 42-MW hydroelectric plant on the Ohio River and approximately 26.5 miles of 138-kilovolt (kV) transmission facilities
For more information on the Village of Haskins, please visit www.haskinsvillage.org.