Power Outages
Power Billing
Storm Tips
Lighting Your Home
Electric Appliances
In Case of Emergency

Fixing the Problem
When any one of these incidents occurs, circuit breakers or other protective equipment shut off the flow of power. All customers on that circuit lose power.

• Storms are violent natural events that unleash destructive forces all across Sheffield Utilities' service territory. High winds are the most common source of outages.

• Wind may cause two wires to slap together and short out. It may blow tree limbs or entire trees into or across lines, either knocking them down and breaking them, or knocking them into each other and causing a short.

• Floods may inundate substations, forcing them to be shut down to prevent major damage to expensive transformers, capacitors, switches and other equipment.

• Wind may create such force against a pole and the equipment installed on it that the pole actually snaps in two, bringing the lines down with it. Or a vehicle may skid on a slippery street, run into a pole and break it.

• Lightning may strike a transformer or substation.

In all the above cases, Sheffield Utilities' facilities have been broken or damaged and must be replaced. Each location has to be located, isolated (current turned off to the spot) and made safe. Then the appropriate employees, equipment and replacement gear have to be brought to the scene.

Sometimes the cause of the outage--for example, fallen trees or floods--has also blocked the streets or highways to the area. Before Sheffield Utilities' crews can even get to the scene of the outage, they often have to cut up and remove trees or wait for flood waters to recede.

Storms often create a large number of outages simultaneously across broad sections of our service territory. When such massive damage occurs, we cannot respond to every outage at once, but have to prioritize them.