Who Gets Power First?

“Dawson Power, can I help you?”
“My power’s out.”
“Do you have an account or meter number?”
“No not with me.”
“That’s ok, what’s your name and address, we’ll look it up that way.”
(Info given)

“Yes you are in the area affected by an outage that our crews are already working on.”
“Well, when will the power be back on?”

“I’m afraid we don’t know.”
“Well, can you guess?”

“No, all I can tell you is that our crews are working in that area.”
“What about my stuff in the fridge, or my pipes? What about watering my cows?”

Almost without exception, our outage calls take the same direction. There are a dozen things that affect when power will be restored. It starts with how extensive the outage is followed by weather conditions and somewhere in the middle, the linemen deal with road conditions, zero visibility, darkness, equipment failure, and access to power lines in general. It’s pretty easy to spot a line that’s down but try looking for a crack in an insulator from 30 feet below. Then add causes such as trees, animals, and accidents. Sometimes it seems it’s like finding that proverbial needle in a haystack.

Safety is our top priority during emergency service restoration situations and it should be your top priority, as well.

Dawson Public Power District has about 51 distribution substations, each serving hundreds of meters over 5,200+ miles of distribution line. When a major outage occurs, the substations are checked first. A problem here could be caused by failure in the transmission system supplying the substation. If the problem can be corrected at the substation level, power may be restored to a large number of people.

If the sub checks out ok, the linemen focus on the distribution lines coming out of the substation. Sometimes that’s where the problem is and service can be restored to a number of customers on one or more circuits.

We don’t know who exactly is out of service until you call us. We have a great mapping system but it’s not tied to our electric grid (yet). It tells us where our lines and meters are, but we need you to call us if you are out of power. We need current phone contact information too.

Outage updates can be found on our Facebook and Twitter accounts. When you request to be a friend on our Facebook account, rest assured your privacy is protected so that none of our other friends see your personal posts or pictures. We “hide” your posts and the only time you show up is when you make a comment on something we’ve posted.  Share our information with your family, friends and neighbors during outages. 

Call us any time.