How power is restored after a storm

 

We have all grown accustomed to relying on the fact that if we lose our electric service, it will be restored within a few hours. However, Mother Nature doesn't always cooperate, making the case for prolonged outages. No matter how structurally sound the line system is built, no matter how dedicated the line crews are to locating an outage and making repairs in a timely manner, there is no second-guessing the effects of Mother Nature.

Consolidated Electric Cooperative supervisors and crews follow a basic principle when it comes to restoring power - priority is always focused on electric lines that will get the most people back in service the quickest. Line crews typically begin making repairs to main lines that extend from substations that can affect 200-600 members. They then continue to tap lines which may affect 30-200 members and then they finish outage restoration by making repairs to individual service lines that affect 1-5 members.

Click on the Getting Back On Line graphic above to gain a complete understanding of how line crews work to restore power outages in our service territory.