Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L) (www.kcpl.com) provides electricity to more than 800,000 customers in 47 northwest Missouri and eastern Kansas counties. With a service area of about 18,000 square miles, it has more than 3,000 miles of transmission lines, 24,000 miles of distribution lines, and more than 400 substations to deliver power to that population.
Recently the utility had to deal with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) compliance surrounding sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) management. KCP&L, like most utility companies, utilizes SF6, a colorless, odorless, man-made gas. SF6 is primarily used in the electrical equipment industry as an electrical insulating gas. In the 1980s, SF6 replaced oil as the primary insulator in electrical switch-gear.