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Frequent power outages baffle some of the residents

Olney residents who are signed up with Texas New Mexico for utilities may have noticed frequent power outages. During the outages, you will notice various Texas New Mexico utility trucks in your neighborhood as well as workers repairing and testing the power lines. There could be a number of reasons for the power outages, and you should be prepared in case you are affected.

One explanation for the recent outages is the summer heat. Every year as summer comes into full swing, electric customers start noticing that their power seems to surge or even lose power altogether for brief amounts of time.

During hot weather months, customers naturally increase their use of air conditioners, which run for more extended periods as the heat continues into the late afternoon and evening hours. In recent years, more customers have also switched to refrigerated-air units, which use more energy compared to the evaporative cooling units that they replace.  

The additional demand for power may overload electric lines, transformers, and other equipment used to deliver electricity. Sustained electric demand during hot weather may not allow transformers time to cool correctly overnight, causing them to overheat and damage the electrical equipment. Outages related to overloaded transformers don’t affect most customers. Once your electric company identifies the problem, crews replace the damaged equipment with equipment that can handle bigger loads.

Thunderstorms are the No. 1 cause of customer outages on the electric system.  More accurately, it is the lightning and wind bursts that accompany a storm that usually causes the outages.  The energy of a lightning strike is difficult to overcome, but electric companies have deployed lightning arrestors and extensive grounding on system equipment to help prevent these outages as much as possible.  Most electric companies have an aggressive tree trimming and line clearing program to help reduce tree/windcaused outages.  Electric companies continually monitor the weather for approaching thunderstorms and call additional crews into service, in advance, to help respond quickly to outages when the storm hits our system.

Here are a few tips from www.Ready.govto help you prepare for power outage:

- Keep freezers and refrigerators closed.

- Only use generators outdoors and away from windows.

- Do not use a gas stove to heat your home.

- Disconnect appliances and electronics to avoid damage from electrical surges.

- Have alternate plans for refrigerating medicines or using power-dependent medical devices.

- If safe, go to an alternate location for heat or cooling.

- Check on neighbors.

Information for this article was obtained through ready.gov and EPElectric.com.