As I drove home from work Friday evening, one of those all-too-familiar afternoon thunderstorms blew in, complete with bright bolts of lightning, booming thunder and a driving rainstorm. A block from home, a tree had fallen and taken out the overhead power line. Our house was without electricity, and I had to get ready for our evening’s commitment by candlelight.
The power came on again shortly before we left the house, roughly an hour later. All in all, a minor inconvenience and one caused by Mother Nature. A quick repair by the line crew and we were back in business.
Elsewhere around the country, the story’s been much different this summer, as the relentless heat has forced utilities from Texas to New York to ration electricity. Just last week, Con Edison announced rolling brownouts through parts of Manhattan as it struggled to meet the demands of customers seeking relief from an unusually oppressive heat wave that had the city in its grip.
That’s not how we do business at Santee Cooper. With a carefully planned and executed maintenance and improvement plan for our generation, transmission and distribution system, we have enjoyed reliability ratings that are a gold standard for this industry. Our customers, on average, are without power around five minutes a year. And when the dog days of summer settle in, our load forecasting has ensured that we’ve got the capacity to cool your brow, no matter how hot it gets outside.
That doesn’t mean we don’t have outages: summer storms are a primary contributor, and always remember you can report outages online from a mobile device, and you can track the repair work too.
We want to make sure you’re using electricity as efficiently as possible, of course. You want to be comfortable at home, and we get that. You also don’t want to pay for power you don’t need – that is, you don’t want to waste it. So while you’re cooling down after a hot summer’s day, visit our Reduce The Use website and learn some tricks and tips that can keep you cool without taxing your air conditioning unit so much.
And if you’ve got a tip you don’t see there, share it with us on Facebook. If it checks out, we’ll add it to the website!
