To report an outage or trouble with your service call (256) 389-2478
Fixing the Problem
When any of these incidents arise, circuit breakers or other protective devices automatically halt the power supply, resulting in an outage for all customers connected to the affected circuit.
Storms are violent natural events that unleash destructive forces all across our service territory. High winds are the most common source of outages.
Wind may cause 2 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 2, bringing the lines down with it. Or a vehicle may skid on a slippery street, and run into a pole, causing it to break.
Lightning may strike a transformer or substation.
In all the above cases, the utility infrastructure must be replaced. Each location has to be located, isolated (currently 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 in the area. Before utility 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 simultaneously create a large number of outages across broad sections of our service territory. When such massive damage occurs, we cannot respond to every outage at once. The outages are prioritized to get the most customers on, as quickly as possible.