The Steps We Take To Restore Your Power

High winds, storms, vegetation, cars hitting poles, and even wildlife are just a few reasons we have power outages.

Power is usually restored within an hour or two, but extended outages occur— especially in rural and remote areas. When an outage happens, we prioritize repairs to restore your power as quickly and safely as possible.

Step One: Protect Public Safety
Downed wires and poles are some of the most severe hazards, and we address those first. Remember to treat all downed lines with extreme caution and always assume the wires are energized. Never touch downed lines or anything near them, and stay far away.

Step Two: Check Transmission Lines
Transmission lines deliver power to the entire Central Lincoln service area from dams controlled by the Bonneville Power Administration, or BPA. If there is an outage on their transmission lines, our crews must wait for BPA to restore power to those lines before we can deliver power to our customers.

Step Three: Check Our Substations
Substations take the high-voltage power delivered from transmission lines and reduce it to a lower voltage for Central Lincoln’s distribution lines. Repairs can take time when a substation is down. Thanks to investments in our system, we have multiple ways to feed our substations and can often reroute power from another feeder to get power back on sooner while crews continue making repairs.

Step Four: Check Distribution Lines
Distribution lines deliver power from substations to a city or neighborhood. Emergency services, like hospitals and first responders, are the priority, and we work to restore power to these customers first. After that, crews work on restoring power to areas with the largest number of customers.

Step Five: Check Tap Lines
Tap lines carry power from distribution lines to specific homes or buildings. Like distribution lines, tap line repairs are prioritized by the number of customers affected.

Step Six: Check Service Lines and Transformers
Transformers are gray cylinders attached to poles or green boxes on the ground. They reduce the higher voltage on distribution or tap lines to the correct service voltage for a home or business. Damage to the service line between your home or business and the transformer on a nearby pole can result in a situation where you have no power, but your neighbor does.

Be Prepared.
Please don’t wait until you are in the dark to prepare for an outage. Plan ahead and have a basic supply kit ready for outages and other emergencies. Learn how to assemble your kit at ready.gov/kit.