Power Restoration

When the pow­er goes out, most of us expect it to come back on with­in a few hours. But some­times major storms cause wide­spread dam­age, and out­ages can last longer than expect­ed. The good news is that your elec­tric co-op’s line crews work long, hard hours to restore ser­vice safe­ly to the great­est num­ber of mem­bers — that’s you - in the short­est time pos­si­ble. Ever won­der how they do it? Well, there are four steps to restor­ing pow­er that we should all know about, espe­cial­ly when we find our­selves in the dark.

Step one: repair high-volt­age trans­mis­sion lines. Trans­mis­sion tow­ers and lines sup­ply pow­er to thou­sands of mem­bers. They rarely fall, but when they do, they must be repaired first before oth­er parts of the sys­tem can oper­ate. Step two: inspect dis­tri­b­u­tion sub­sta­tion. Dis­tri­b­u­tion sub­sta­tions receive high volt­age pow­er from trans­mis­sion lines, then dis­perse that pow­er at a low­er volt­age to the co-op’s main dis­tri­b­u­tion lines.

Depend­ing on your elec­tric co-op ser­vice ter­ri­to­ry, dis­tri­b­u­tion sub­sta­tions can serve either hun­dreds or thou­sands of mem­bers. When a major pow­er out­age occurs, the co-op’s line crews inspect the sub­sta­tion to deter­mine if the prob­lem stems from the trans­mis­sion line speed­ing into the sub­sta­tion, the sub­sta­tion itself, or if the prob­lem is fur­ther down the line. Step three: check main dis­tri­b­u­tion lines. If the prob­lem can­not be iso­lat­ed at a dis­tri­b­u­tion sub­sta­tion, the main dis­tri­b­u­tion lines are checked first. These lines car­ry pow­er to large groups of mem­bers in your elec­tric co-op’s ser­vice ter­ri­to­ry. Step four: exam­ine tap lines. If local out­ages per­sist, sup­ply lines called tap lines are exam­ined.

These lines deliv­er pow­er to trans­form­ers that are either mount­ed on poles or placed on pads for under­ground ser­vice, and can be found out­side of homes, busi­ness­es and schools. Occa­sion­al­ly, dam­age will occur on the ser­vice lines between the near­est trans­former and your home. Has your neigh­bor ever had pow­er while yours is out? That is why, when the prob­lem is in the tap lines, co-op line crews will fix out­ages in an order that will restore ser­vice to the great­est num­ber of mem­bers at a time. As you can see, restor­ing pow­er after a major out­age is a big job and involves much more than sim­ply flip­ping a switch or remov­ing a tree on a dam­aged line.

When co-ops work to restore pow­er, they often have the capa­bil­i­ty to work on mul­ti­ple parts of the sys­tem simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. This ensures reli­able pow­er with a faster response time. In the event of an out­age, your local line crews will restore pow­er safe­ly to the great­est num­ber of mem­bers in the short­est time pos­si­ble and we’ll keep work­ing until the lights go back on. As always, we appre­ci­ate your patience and your busi­ness.