My parents, in southern Connecticut, lost power yesterday afternoon, due to Tropical Storm Isaias. When my mother told me on the phone, I asked her if she called it in, and she said she had. That’s something we always did when we lost power; call the electric utility and report the outage. Sometimes they already know about it while other times it’s news to them. I think they appreciate these reports, so they know where outages happened.
But I learned at some point that not everyone does this. Do you?
I haven’t, generally. Our company has started texting and emailing us when our power goes out. I think given this new system I will start notifying them if we have an outage and I don’t get the notification.
I’ll bet that today it’s possible to report outages on a website, or via a smartphone app. But when I was growing up in the 1970s, we had to call it in.
I think our power company can see our meter in real time. So, I don’t think they need us to call it in anymore. If all the meters on our street go to zero, they figure it out.
And, absolutely you can report it on line now. And see a map of the outages. And get an estimated time for restored service.
I always do, the more houses they have with outage reports, the faster they can locate the problem. Besides, when everyone assumes that everyone calls in, they don’t bother calling in. Kind of a bystander effect.
Also, with cable TV and electrical problems, for whatever reason, I tend to be the first to call in. I’d say at least half the time the operator will tell me there aren’t any known outages in the area. By the time they’re finished getting my info, they’ll tell me their outage map is populating with more problems my area. Not that I’m expecting them to fix the problem 3 minutes sooner since I called right away, but I’d hate to find out the problem is just my house or just a 3 or 4 houses and no one is calling.
Also, I’d sooner spend my time on the phone with them than making useless ‘power’s out again, near X and Y streets’ posts on facebook. Getting your daily attention fix isn’t going to turn your lights back on.
Same here, I report it immediately. I get updates via text, crew investigating, crew on scene, estimated restoration. Then the final your power is on reply NO if this is a lie. Power outages used to happen more often in my area it’s gotten better.
Same here. We live in a rural area. Our little dead end road has two other houses on it besides ours. More than once it’s happened that our road was the only one without power. Usually it happens because some critter decided to climb the power pole and get itself fried. Or a tree branch came down on the wire. When the power goes out I call it in immediately. Power company has an automated system whereby they can tell from your phone number where you are. Press a couple keys to answer a few simple questions and you’re done. They also do an automated callback to make sure there aren’t any further problems.
I call it in. Our power company’s website is awkward to navigate and use on a phone. I can call in in a minute, while it take five times as long just finding the right page to report it to.
I’m also in a rural area, small subdivision, and I always call it in. The more information they have I figure they can find the fault easier. I also have a smart meter as someone mentioned, so perhaps it’s not needed. I don’t know if the meters are continuously monitored or just when they need usage data.
I usually call in, but it is extremely frustrating. I have 2 accounts, home and business, and for whatever reason, the phone ID lookup system always defaults to the location that I am not at. I then need to look up the account number for the other location.
We use the app. Once, I called in order to speak to someone real because the power outage was caused, at least in part, by a limb from one of our trees, which I could see hanging from the power line in my back yard. I wanted someone to know exactly where to go.
I lived in Queens during the summer when they were having the massive breakdowns of their power grid, 2005 -I think.
I never lost power during that time, although the surrounding streets did. But I got several phone calls from ConEd that summer, wanting to know if I had power.
I always call in. Mostly it has already been reported, but I have at least once been the first. They give an estimate of how long it is likely to last and they invariably over-estimate so if they say 2 hours, I can count on power back in an hour and a half, usually less.
We’ve tried, and they do not have any way you can over the phone. They simply say to call 911 if a power line is down.
I imagine their technology identifies the outages and performs triage, but it was a tad frustrating when we wanted to tell them that we could see the specific branch which had knocked out power to a largish area - then later we saw them driving up and down the streets trying to find it.
Huh, it never occurred to me that the smart meter they installed on my house last fall might actually help the electric company to detect an outage. Seems kind of obvious now that you mention it.
I still call them up if we have a power outage lasting more than a couple of minutes so that I can receive a text on my phone in case it’s restored if we’re away from the house.
You’d think since (most) everyone has a smart phone and no one’s computer is working when the power is out, they’d put a more effort into making sure their outage reporter was as mobile and user friendly as possible. Same thing has happened to me. I try to report it online and eventually just call since it seems faster.
I’m sure they do, but that technology might just be for the bigger nodes. It wouldn’t surprise me if they might get a report of a problem, but it only narrows down the area. A lineman youtuber that I watch from time to time has said that the more people that call the more helpful it is and the less time they’re literally driving down the road in a storm with a flashlight looking for the problem
That’s exactly what we thought. We wanted to tell them that the outage was in our neighbor’s back yard at a specific address. There was NO WAY to give that info via phone. The ONLY instructions were to call 911 if there was an immediate danger from sparking lines or such.
W/o power, our computers/internet were down, and for whatever reason we decided not to mess around on our phones - potentially using up their charge - trying to reach them on-line via our phones.
One of those things where simply allowing us to call on the phone was the simplest approach. Their decision to receive such info solely on-line resulted in us not giving them the info.