SOUTHERN UTAH — When it comes to getting the lights back on during an outage, power company customers play a bigger role than they may think.
In a press release from Rocky Mountain Power, the public utility said that line crews work hard to minimize power outages, but when they do occur, customers shouldn’t rely on their neighbors to report them. In fact, the more customers who report an outage, the quicker workers can find the source of the problem.
“When customers report that their power is out, it helps us identify where the outage is located and assists in pinpointing the issue causing the outage,” said Curt Mansfield, Rocky Mountain Power vice president of operations.
Customers sometimes opt to not report an outage because they assume their neighbors have already reported it or that the company has a mechanism that helps pinpoint where an outage has occurred in their neighborhood, which is not the case.
“Our technology lets us know what is happening on our generation and transmission systems as far the neighborhood substation. Beyond that, we don’t have a blinking light for every customer,” Mansfield said. “The more customers we have reporting an outage, the better the information we will have as we work to restore power.”
Customers can report at outage at the Rocky Mountain Power website, via the Rocky Mountain Power mobile app or by phone at 1-877-508-5088.
For a list of other Washington County utility phone numbers by city, go here.
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Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2017, all rights reserved.
Can’t dispute how primitive that RMP’s infrastructure is, and in the absence of “Internet-connected” customers, a phone call to their customer service department will have to suffice.
Frankly, if you consider the frequent power outages suffered by some of RMP’s regional customers, for example, Winchester Hills, you have to wonder why they have not invested in their substation equipment….They may have inherited some of the equipment from a prior owner, but they do not offer their customers a discount for poor reliability of the transmission network.
The Middleton substation has been identified as a weak point for years, yet RMP has failed to address its vulnerability……..
Dixie Power is superior in all regards….
Caveat_Emptor, the discount you already receive when you lose power, is your meter stops spinning, and so you aren’t charged for any power at all during that time. If you think RMP has problems, try living in a third-world country where power outages happen several times a week, and having power outages for 2 days straight every few months for no apparent reason. Also, the electricity delivered to your home does not arrive by wave of the magic wand. If you are such an expert, apply for a job at RMP and show them how it’s done! I’ll bet you could single-handedly increase their reliability and uptime rating to 100%!!!