Blink or Outage?

YEC uses an auto­mat­ic phone answer­ing sys­tem to han­dle pow­er out­age reports. If your cor­rect phone num­ber is on file with our office, your phone call can be han­dled more effi­cient­ly. Hav­ing the cor­rect con­tact infor­ma­tion also allows us to make any fol­low-up calls to you about elec­tric ser­vice prob­lems. If your phone num­ber has changed since you signed up for your elec­tric ser­vice, please con­tact our mem­ber ser­vices depart­ment at 803–684‑4248.

This depends on the amount of dam­age sus­tained and cur­rent con­di­tions. Field per­son­nel must com­plete a dam­age assess­ment before any reli­able esti­mate can be made.

Some neigh­bor­hoods get elec­tric­i­ty from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent cir­cuits, so you may notice your lights are out, but your neigh­bors have pow­er. In such cas­es, the prob­lem could be orig­i­nat­ing from your house­’s elec­tric line, a par­tic­u­lar tap line, a main feed­er line, or at the sub­sta­tion. For us to deter­mine where the prob­lem orig­i­nates, it is extreme­ly impor­tant that you call 1–866–374‑1234 and report the out­age with your exact street address and cor­rect phone num­ber.

This may be an inci­dence of par­tial pow­er. At this point, mem­bers should unplug large/major appli­ances such as refrig­er­a­tors, ovens, air con­di­tion­ers, etc., as this could cause a pow­er fluc­tu­a­tion and result in anoth­er out­age. Once lights are bright, indi­cat­ing full pow­er has been restored, it is safe to plug in major appli­ances.

Many peo­ple think that the loud noise they heard was the sound of a trans­former explod­ing, due to light­ning or oth­er extreme con­di­tions. This was prob­a­bly not the case. The noise could have been a fuse blow­ing. YEC’s pow­er lines use fus­es in a sim­i­lar man­ner to the way you use fus­es in your home. These fus­es pro­tect parts of our dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem when severe weath­er strikes. The noise can be sub­stan­tial lead­ing many peo­ple to think some­thing has explod­ed. When report­ing an out­age, it is very help­ful when you tell us you heard a loud noise because it helps us iso­late the loca­tion of prob­lems on our lines.

You should first refer to your dis­as­ter plan and call your home health nurse and physi­cian. You should noti­fy your fam­i­ly and/or friends and call EMS espe­cial­ly if your sit­u­a­tion is life threat­en­ing. YEC reminds mem­bers who have extreme crit­i­cal health needs that require a con­tin­u­ous pow­er source dur­ing an out­age, to make arrange­ments before the cri­sis to relo­cate to a place where those needs can be met. Anoth­er option is to make per­son­al arrange­ments for a gen­er­a­tor to hook up to machines that have to be kept run­ning. Gen­er­a­tors should nev­er be hooked into a home or busi­ness’ elec­tric cir­cuit. Gen­er­a­tors should only be con­nect­ed direct­ly to crit­i­cal care machines or oth­er appli­ances.

Check for water sat­u­ra­tion of your ceil­ings and light fit­tings inside and out­side. If wet, call us imme­di­ate­ly. If there is no obvi­ous dam­age to your light fit­tings, turn off all but one light. Check the light­ing cir­cuit’s fuse or cir­cuit break­er oper­a­tion at your switch­board. Turn off your main switch and replace the fuse. Turn the main switch again. If the fuse blows, call YEC.

Lights being dim­mer than usu­al, hot plates slow to cook, and motors fail­ing to start are all indica­tive that there might be a prob­lem in the high volt­age sys­tem. If you observe any of these in your home, turn appli­ances off and unplug them. Leave a min­i­mum of lights on (such as a flu­o­res­cent) and call YEC.

Dur­ing times of mul­ti­ple pow­er out­ages, YEC con­cen­trates our ini­tial restora­tion efforts in the areas and on the pow­er lines that restore elec­tric­i­ty to the great­est num­ber of peo­ple in the short­est peri­od of time. We place empha­sis on vital com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices, emer­gency ser­vices, and pub­lic safe­ty. Please be patient, and we will restore your elec­tric ser­vice as soon as we pos­si­bly can.

Some smoke alarms are pow­ered by AC (alter­nat­ing cur­rent) and use a bat­tery back­up. When these units lose pow­er momen­tar­i­ly they may chirp sev­er­al times to inform you they are on back­up pow­er or are return­ing to main pow­er. For more infor­ma­tion, review the man­u­fac­tur­er’s doc­u­men­ta­tion on your type of alarm.

In a major storm, assume you may be with­out pow­er for some time. Turn off elec­tric appli­ances (like an iron or stove) so you won’t cre­ate a safe­ty haz­ard when the pow­er is turned back on. Remem­ber to include air-con­di­­tion­ing among appli­ances you turn off. Nev­er report haz­ardous sit­u­a­tions by e‑mail. Always call the office at 1–866–374‑1234 so we can respond imme­di­ate­ly!

If you receive a tin­gling sen­sa­tion from any elec­tri­cal appli­ances, turn off the elec­tric­i­ty imme­di­ate­ly. Do not make con­tact with or let any­one else near the sus­pect­ed appli­ance and call YEC.

If you notice unusu­al peri­od­ic vari­a­tions in the nor­mal bright­ness of your lights – some­times very bright, some­times dull – call us. These are symp­toms of a poten­tial­ly haz­ardous sit­u­a­tion. Turn off all your motors and appli­ances, and leave a min­i­mum of lights on.

Call 1–866–374‑1234. York Elec­tric encour­ages you to call our 24-hour ‘Pow­er­Touch’ out­age report­ing sys­tem so we can quick­ly locate where the prob­lem is occur­ring and send crews out right away. Any detailed infor­ma­tion you can sup­ply about the out­age is very ben­e­fi­cial in the trou­bleshoot­ing process. Note: Before report­ing the out­age, YEC rec­om­mends that you first check your main break­ers in your elec­tri­cal pan­el.

Momen­tary out­ages occur when a dis­tur­bance on the line is detect­ed. These dis­tur­bances could be caused by a light­ning strike, a squir­rel or tree branch con­tact­ing the line, or a downed line or out­age in a near­by area, etc. If a fault or short cir­cuit occurs on a pow­er line, a device called a reclos­er opens to stop it and then quick­ly clos­es. This device allows pow­er to con­tin­ue flow­ing through the line with only a brief inter­rup­tion of ser­vice rather than caus­ing an extend­ed pow­er out­age. Although the process is quick and usu­al­ly tem­po­rary, it may cause your lights to blink. If the short cir­cuit con­tin­ues, the reclos­er will oper­ate or ‘trip’ three times before even­tu­al­ly stop­ping the flow of elec­tric­i­ty and caus­ing a pow­er out­age. This process pro­tects the lines from dam­age by cut­ting off pow­er to the affect­ed sec­tion of the line and iso­lat­ing the prob­lem until it can be repaired.