My area just had its third medium scale power outage this week. No storms, no overloaded circuits due to heat/cold. Fortunately, so far (crossing fingers) they haven’t affected my house for a change.
But what is the process you go through when you lose power, if any? Do you let the power company know? Is there a website where you can easily see the outage? How often, if at all, does the power company let you know what is going on and how long it should last?
I think our area is terrible for communication, but I wonder if I’m just expecting too much from them.
If our power goes out and you want to notify the company… Note, that there is NO way to talk to a live person. Just none. You can call the number, but you can only progress if the system recognizes your phone number, which is hit or miss. It wouldn’t recognize ours for about 20+ years despite having the same number the whole time. Or, you can type in your 16 digit utility account number - like who has THAT on hand at 2am sitting in the dark? But, if you can get through that way, you can type number responses to their automated questions and it will record an outage.
You can go on the website to report the outage, and there is an outage map! But, it is rarely accurate. If you report your outage, more than likely it will never show up on the map. So do they know or not? Who knows. About 7 years ago, I wound up running through the streets at 5am and flagged down a truck by standing in the middle of the road waving to talk to someone. They were trying to figure out the issue. I could have easily told them that I heard the transformer blow on the street behind me, but there was no way to report that!
If there is an outage, the only way they communicate is through their facebook page. If you are lucky, they will put up an update in 1-2 hours and then give updates every 4 hours. That’s if it happens during business hours. Others, it might be 4-6 hours before they acknowledge it publicly, and give updates every 8 hours - which is a VERY long time to know what the heck is going on.
I guess we’ve been lucky but both our current utility and our last one, had an accurate app for reporting outages and getting updates. We were able to sign up for text message updates and they have historically been very accurate. That said, knock on wood, we rarely have outages.
We can easily report outages online or by phone. They provide updates by text or phone. There is an updated outage map online. Of course, we have all of this precisely because we have outages a lot! We bought a whole house standby generator a couple years ago because we were tired of not having water when the power went out (we are on a well), among other reasons.
If the power goes out, it does for the entire neighborhood. I live in a community with a bunch of retirees so I never call. I know my neighbors will
At my last house, there were more frequent outages, we lived behind a transformer. Squirrels loved to commit suicide on that transformer. We called then. Because many times we were the only house affected.
This week, new underground cable is being buried in anticipation of fiber optic cable. Which I hear will be installed in 2026.
Thanks to the infrastructure bill, electric lines and fiber optic cable is being installed all over the country. Having buried lines will help outages. Thank your local lawmakers who voted for this legislation. (This is not political but I’m pointing out that this is an outcome of that legislation)
Yes … squirrel suicides are common in our yard! We often yell, “Get away” to squirrels!!
The amount of money spent to trim trees in our area is ridiculous. I would think it might be cost effective to bury the lines, but that’s not on the agenda.
Many years ago, we once had a squirrel commit suicide at a substation. He decided to do it RIGHT as the big VT-UVA football game started. We were watching and saw the kick off - football flying into the air and ZIP!!! Nada for the rest of the night! LOL. No internet or texting to know what was happening then either until the next day it was in the paper.
We also lost power one hour before the super bowl! Fortunately, younger S - who cared the most - had planned to go to a friend’s house who still had power.
I wish we had our lines underground. I don’t see that happening for years. They did talk about possibly burying some of them, but then they would charge the homeowners $3000 each to tie their services in. I don’t see that flying in an area where $40,000/year is considered to be a good salary.
With many modern utility systems they know your power is out and won’t need you to call them. People calling to report outages we already know about or asking when their power will be restored just ties up call takers so the person who saw the transformer blow can’t get through.
If your utility has a system for you to sign up for an online account or text messages, sign up because that is the best way to get updates on your outage.
If they have an online outage map, check that for information on updates and how many people are out. Outage maps are typically updated very frequently.
If your power is out and the website says you have power, either report it online or call. If your utility doesn’t have a way of checking or reporting outage outages online, then call to let them know your power is out. If you have useful information that can help identify the problem like you saw a transformer blow or you can see the line down and the website shows the cause as unknown, it may be helpful to call and let them know.
Restoration times we provide are an educated guess. You might be restored sooner or later. We may not have an estimated restoration time until someone has gotten out there to see the problem. And sometimes in major storms, we won’t give estimated restoration times because we know it is frustrating to be told a time that keeps changing.
We’d have power lines on our street but then underground cables from the street to our house. But a few years ago we were having issues and it turned out to be related to the underground lines and a lot of our yard had to be dug up! It was a pain.
I think our power company does a good job. We had to use our generator three times this winter due to the huge storms we got. They kept the outage map/list updated and sent us texts. The hard part was that our cell signal is so poor that we didn’t always get the texts. We rely on our neighbor to tell us when the power comes back on since we can’t tell with the type of generator we have.
The upside to the storms is that the IRS and state delayed returns and payment of ALL taxes due anytime in April, May, and June until July 15! That was helpful for us since we have our own business.
Our online outage map is often wrong. The powers that be in the company have told me it doesn’t work and they don’t have any plans to get a new one.
Reporting it online - you don’t know if it works because the map doesn’t update.
Calling - you can only report it IF the system recognizes your phone number (usually it doesn’t) or you have your account number which can be infuriating even if you have it because it’s full of dashes. And I believe they only want part of it. So you have to try multiple times to figure out which part they want.
They is no way to let them know you have more information if the power is out.
If it happens because of a storm, that’s one thing. But this happens at my house about once a month. I’m the expert on resetting clocks.
If it is a utility regulated by the state, I would look into complaining to the state regulatory board or reach out to your local state representative. If it is a municipal utility, I would raise the issue at the mayor or city council level. If it is a co-op, there may be board meetings where you can complain. What you are describing is unacceptable and sounds like an antiquated system compared to what is available today.
Central Maine Power does a very good job of keeping us informed via signup for notifications. We stopped calling because the couple of times we did, the pre-pickup recording indicated that they already knew about the outage in our area.
We haven’t had a failure in our AZ area in years, but we used to get the same type of phone notifications.
I do believe, though, that they purposely put out very conservative estimates of power restoration so you feel good about the fact that they always beat the estimate.
When my power goes out I go online to the power company and report the outage. They also have an outage map. Often it’s already known and it gives an estimate of when we can expect the power back.
A few weeks ago the power went out and I later that morning got an email from them with an apology and an estimate when power would go back on.
There have been times when we were the only ones on the whole street who could make a call…because we have an old fashioned landline. Often when our power goes out, so does the internet and cell service.
But really, our power company usually notifies us before we get to them
We report outages online as well. If you have anyone in your household who needs electricity for medical needs, you can register them with electric company and you are supposed to get priority in having power restored in an outage.
I’m not sure if the OP meant what should she do? Or if the question was more what do people reading the thread do?
For the latter, i live in a mild climate with underground powerlines and no snow, so power outages are quite rare. I average less than 1 per year. In that rare instance, I use my phone to look up the power outage on the company’s website. It shows how many customers were effected and expected time until power is returned. They always beat this time estimate, usually restoring power within an hour or two.
The powerlines and neighborhood are structured in such a way such that when there is a power outage for my home, there are almost certainly going to be a lot of other persons in the neighborhood who lose power at the same time. As such, I feel little need to contact power company, even if the outage is not reported on the website. I expect that they will be inundated with calls about the power outage, regardless of what I do, so calling won’t positively impact the situation. Instead I’ll just be on hold for an extremely long time, with little benefit.
We have Duke Energy and they are pretty good. You can report an outage on their website or text or call them. They will text you back with an estimated time of repair. You can look at their website here: https://www.duke-energy.com/home
I have my power company’s outage reporting phone number saved in my contact list. I give it about 30 seconds to come back on, then I call to report it. They probably already know, but the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
We rarely have outages lasting more than a few hours and rarely have to dispose of any food due to an outage. We have them a bunch of times/year but often 2 hours or less.
