Frigid weather has resulted in power outages across the state. Jackson EMC says the freezing temperatures which arrived with the new year caused scattered outages for some members across its 10-county service area this morning. According to the National Weather Service, temperatures are 10-15 degrees below average for much of the Southeast and are expected to remain low through the weekend. April Sorrow is Director of Public Relations and Communication with Jackson EMC. She says crews are on alert.
“We have linemen ready to respond to outages 24 hours a day, and what we saw overnight as temperatures became very, very low, is that we had a few outages as a result of equipment breakdowns in fuses and transformers because of the high electrical demand,” according to Sorrow. “
Jackson EMC prepared for the extreme weather by stocking trucks, prepping linemen and increasing staffing in its System Control Center, which monitors 226,000 meters across 13,900 miles of energized wire.
“We were sending out linemen overnight and they continue to work to restore outages, but we did have a peak of around 1600 members between the hours of 3 and 7 am.”
Sorrow says these cold weather repairs typically require less time those needed due to storm damage.
“With these type of outages, a fuse will blow or we have an issue with a transformer, and those are very quick fixes once the linemen can reach the location where the outage is occurring,” Sorrow said. “It’s not as labor intensive as maybe replacing a pole that we see when we have major ice storms or like we did with Hurricane Irma.”
Jackson EMC members may report outages at outage.jacksonemc.com, or by calling 1-855-422-7600, and can track outages using the outage map in the Storm Center at www.jacksonemc.com.
