Our current outage count is 11,473 meters in 232 separate locations. To put this in perspective, we serve right at 55,000 meters and after the storm yesterday about half of our total meters were without power. These outages are widespread across our service area, which is 1100 square miles.
Much of our service area is in mountainous, cross country areas and does not just flow down the side of the highways. Our distribution lines are spread down into valleys and up across mountains. Our lines extend into the outermost edges of rural developments, We are known for our beautiful mountain areas, but that’s also what makes power restoration difficult in times like these. We have an average of about 9 meters per mile of line, compared to investor owned utilities which serve over 30 meters per mile of line, which sometimes causes power restoration to take longer.
This storm was strong and severe and brought down tons of trees on roadways and power lines causing a great deal of devastation, but our system will recover and all power will be restored. We know a restoration of this magnitude will take multiple days and we continue to ask for your patience and your understanding. Updates will be posted as soon as additional information is available.