How We Respond When the Power Goes Out

When the power goes out, you can be sure we're working hard 24/7 to restore it as quickly and safely as possible. Here's the process to get your power back on:

1. You report the outage

Until you report it, we might be unaware of an outage in your area. Call our emergency phone number as soon as you notice an outage and we'll send out our crews.

Before calling us:

• Make sure the outage isn't isolated to your home or business.

• If your neighbours still have power, check your main circuit breaker. Turn it off and back on again to ensure a good connection.

Call our power emergency line if:

• Your electrical panel is not the cause of the outage.

• The more details we get, the easier it is to identify possible sources and size of the outage.

2. We send out crews

Once we know about an outage, we send crews to assess the situation. How quickly we can get to the area and fix the damage is affected by:

• Time of day.
• Location of the problem.
• Number of other outages.
• Weather.

3. Our crews identify the cause

Restoring power is complex and dangerous, so your safety and the safety of our crews is our main concern. Finding the source of the outage takes more time for underground system issues, or if the overhead line is long or difficult to reach. We begin repairs as quickly as possible once we identify the cause, assess the damage and determine that it's safe to start repairs.

4. We restore your power

We'll restore the power when repairs are safely completed. Sometimes the power may go out again, which can be a sign of a different, unidentified problem. That's why we need you to call us every time the power goes out (after you've checked your electrical panel).

Prioritizing multiple outages

Here's how we determine the order we restore power when there are multiple outages at the same time:

1. Life threatening or dangerous conditions like downed power lines on a road or vehicle.
2. Key community assets and critical services like hospitals, police, fire, etc.
3. Outages that restore power to the most customers in the least amount of time.
4. Smaller, isolated outages.

Restoration times

Since every outage is unique and our crews need time to arrive on site, locate and assess the outage, it can be difficult to predict power restoration times. When downed trees, severe weather and/or high volumes of traffic come to play, our first priority is always working safely to complete the repairs correctly the first time.

We understand that it can be frustrating not knowing the exact estimated restoration time, and appreciate your understanding and patience until power can be restored.