My Power is Out. Now What?

This is by far the most asked question, and we wish we had a crystal ball. There are just too many factors to consider, and each outage is different. When the cooperative is dealing with a small, one location outage, our average restoration time is just over an hour. But when several thousand households are out, it will take longer due to outage complexity, time and manpower. You might be one of the first neighborhoods restored, or the last, and to give an estimated time would not be accurate due to unexpected situations that arise during widespread outages.

If you would like to sign up for text notifications for when the power goes out and when it is restored, please sign up for our outage notifications through SmartHub.

• Animals and trees making contact with wires can cause an outage. 
• Other events like digging, construction or automobile accidents can cause damage to power poles or lines. 
• Farm-related accidents can also cause outages.
• Equipment failure can also be a reason for an outage. 
• An overload may also cause equipment to fail. We typically see these problems on extremely hot, or high peak days, during the months of May through September. 
• Power supplier failure can cause outages on our line. We are reliant on our power suppliers, and if they experience major outages, those outages may affect our system.

When an after-hours storm hits, our linemen are at their homes, their kids’ ball games, out to dinner and basically enjoying evening activities like everyone else. To be prepared, on-call crews are within 20 minutes of the office, and once notified of an outage they still have to “suit up” and drive to the outage location, assess the situation (often patrolling miles of power line to find the cause of the outage). Also, at times they may need to return to the cooperative’s warehouse to get additional materials, such as poles and power transformers to make repairs. Sometimes the fix is as easy as resetting a fuse but sometimes it involves replacing a broken pole.

Your home may be on a different distribution line than your neighbor. To handle the load neighborhoods, businesses, towns, and individual residences are powered by different lines, substations, and electric poles.

Safety is always the first priority. Crews give immediate attention to dangerous situations, such as power lines down on roadways or streets. After that, the substations and primary lines, where the greatest number of members can be restored at once receive attention. Crews then focus on smaller lines to restore power to smaller groups of members. Last, crews work on damage to individual service connections. Visit our How Power is Restored page for more information.

Your lack of power could be due to equipment that is your responsibility to maintain. Victory Electric maintains the system up to a connect point. For underground service, that is either a transformer, pedestal or underground connection point at a meter socket. For overhead lines, the connect point is usually the weather head mast on your home. You will need to consult an electrician for these repairs.

While we cannot control weather or all circumstances, we can work to limit power outages by:

• Maintaining our equipment during planned outages
• Tree trimming to limit line damage
• Investing in new equipment and technology
• Employee training 
• Built-in backups and stock materials for quick replacement

Storm damage cleanup is the responsibility of the property owner.

Ever had your lights blink for just a split second or 5 seconds? We call that a power blink - a brief interruption that is designed to prevent an extended power outage. Blinks occur when an object, such as a tree limb, comes into contact with a power line or other equipment. If the limb remains on the line, the breaker opens and tries to close again. If the obstruction is still on the line after the third try, the breaker opens and does not close automatically - requiring a crew dispatch and to report the outage. To prevent damage to the power line equipment or your home, a circuit breaker interrupts the electricity for a fraction of a second. There is no need to report such a blink as an outage. However, if you experience multiple blinks over the course of 24-48 hours, check your in-home breakers for any electrical issues. If no issues are found, call us.

Falling trees and branches are huge culprits causing power outages. No one likes cutting down trees, but Victory Electric have right-of-way clearance to remove branches that interfere with power lines. If you have a tree that is close to an overhead line, contact us and we will send a tree trimming crew assess the situation.

Also, having a correct phone number on file with our office helps us restore outages quicker. When you call, your location is automatically added to our system, which gives dispatchers a better idea of where problem areas exist. You can update your contact information by calling our office or visiting our online web portal SmartHub.