While we can’t tame Mother Nature’s occasional rage, we do a variety of things to help keep power outages from occurring and to keep them as brief as possible when they do occur. These efforts include:
- Scheduling regular maintenance of lines and equipment.
- Trimming trees to keep them away from lines and equipment.
- Investing in technology to monitor our system and indicate where problems might occur.
- Maintaining an outage response plan to ensure that outages are repaired as quickly as possible.
- Monitoring weather forecasts to adequately manage staffing.
- Maintaining close contact with other electric cooperatives in the region to ensure that additional assistance is available if needed.
Every electric co-op follows a basic principle when it comes to restoring power: priority goes to the lines that will get the most people back in service the quickest. This usually begins with main lines and continues out to tap lines and then to individual service lines. Exceptions are made for people on life-supporting medical equipment. Notify your co-op immediately if someone in your family uses such equipment, and always have a backup generator ready.