How Snohomish County PUD decides which outage repair jobs to do first

Snohomish County PUD posted a link on its Twitter account detailing how it decides which outage repair jobs to do first.

  • During major storms, a number of factors are considered in order to determine which repairs crews make first.
  • First, the utility focuses on outages at the higher-voltage transmission level, which power substations that serve large numbers of customers, hospitals, schools and businesses.
  • Oil spills from transformers, wires blocking main highways and wires down on buildings or vehicles get high priority based on the safety hazards they present.
  • Next to be restored are substation main line circuits that serve neighborhoods and/or businesses.
  • Smaller outages are then addressed. These may be caused by transformer malfunctions or fallen service lines and may serve one or just a few homes.
  • Finally outages impacting non-essential street lights are resolved.
  1. I know the crews are working hard to get everyone back on but it doesn’t seem like it when you’re that one tiny area in a neighborhood where everyone has power but a 2-3 block area that you happen to live in. Thank goodness we finally got our power back early this morning. To those who haven’t, I feel for you and hope yours is back soon too.

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