09/27/2024
Many of you woke up to scenes a lot like this one, repeated all over our service territory. In the wake of Hurricane Helene, broken poles and downed trees are affecting not some, but most of our circuits.
As of 11:15 a.m., the 115-kV transmission system, which delivers power to many of our substations and then to our members’ homes and businesses, is down from Savannah to Hinesville. We are waiting to hear from the transmission provider on an estimated time for restoration.
Almost 100% of our system is without power.
What does this mean for our members? A multi-day restoration process. We hope to be able to restore power to some areas today, but some will take another day or two…or three. We would love to give you a time frame on when exactly your area will be restored — as we know the burning question is “When will I have power?” — but at this point, with such widespread damage and many moving parts, we will not be able to provide those time estimates just yet. We hope the outcome is much better, but it would be wise to plan to be without power for the next few days.
The good news? (Yes, we have a bit of good news.) Help is on the way! Right now, we have crews working in every county in our service territory — Coastal Electric linemen as well as 3 contract crews. In addition, 6 crews of 40 linemen are on their way from Orlando, as well as a crew from Virginia. Around noon, another 3 crews will be on the road to help, and we are working on securing even more to speed up the restoration process over the weekend.
We know this is not the news our members expected to hear, as this outage will be much longer than you typically experience. We realize that this is a difficult situation. Know that we will do whatever it takes to get your power back on and serve our members well.
Thanks so much to everyone who has shared photos with us and reached out to let us know how you fared through the storm! Hang in there, stay safe, and we will get through this together, as we always do.