Message from President/CEO Randy Crenshaw about Outages
We want to assure you that we are doing everything in our power to prepare for a large outage in advance.
Our right of way crew keeps tress and other growth trimmed away from power lines. Most outages happen when trees fall on power lines due to high winds or ice on branches. Not only does trimming prevent some of these outages, a clean right-of-way gives linemen easier access when there is a problem. We have recently completed a major right-of-way project on our system and we appreciate our members’ understanding of the importance of this project. We have already seen a decrease in the number of outages and outage times on a small scale.
Our computerized outage reporting system can handle multiple incoming lines and thousands of calls an hour. The system works off of caller-id which allows our computer to find the caller’s address as well as the substation and main circuit that serves their location. That information is automatically forwarded to a dispatcher who is on-call at all times.
All substations are monitored in our office. A computer at each substation sends real time data about the flow of electricity to our main office. They system automatically alerts us to problems at the substations, the heart of the electrical distribution system.
Irwin EMC can double or triple our staff in a matter of hours through mutual aid agreements with other EMCs of Georgia. If there’s enough time before a storm, our vendors can ship in extra supplies.
Our crews go to work as soon as it’s safe to go to (no lightening, etc.). Our first priority is to get the most number of members back on in the least amount of time. We encourage you to call our office as many times as you want to find out the status of your outage.
We do our best to keep your power on all the time, but for those times when we have no control over storm damage, we want you to be as prepared and informed as possible. Please call me any time you have a concern or a question about any part of your service.
Randy Crenshaw
