How Electric Service is Restored After a Storm

PowerSouth Energy Cooperative, West Florida Electric’s generation and transmission cooperative, and WFEC have plans in place to restore electric service to members as soon as possible. Following a major storm when the weather subsides, PowerSouth and WFEC crews are dispatched to assess storm damage and develop a plan to restore power as quickly and safely as possible. Please be aware of the steps that must be taken to restore power to members after a major storm makes landfall.

Step 1 – PowerSouth’s transmission towers and lines supply power to one or more transmission substations. These lines seldom fall, but can be damaged by winds or tornadoes. Tens of thousands of people could be served by one high-voltage transmission line, so if damaged, these lines receive attention first from PowerSouth crews.

Step 2 – Cooperatives like WFEC have several distribution substations, serving thousands of members. When an outage occurs, these local distribution substations are checked first by WFEC crews. Problems here could be caused by failure in the transmission system supplying the substation (see Step 1). If a problem can be corrected at the substation level, power may then be restored to a large number of people.

Step 3 – Main distribution supply lines are checked next if the problem cannot be isolated at the substation. These supply lines carry electricity away from the substation to a group of member-owners, such as a town or housing development. When power is restored at this stage, all member-owners served by this supply line may see the lights come on, as long as there are no additional problems farther down the line. 

Step 4 – The final supply lines, called taps, carry power to the utility poles or underground transformers outside houses or other buildings. Line crews fix the remaining outages based on restoring the greatest number of member-owners in the least amount of time.

Step 5- Sometimes damage occurs on the service line between homes and the transformers on a nearby pole. This explains why you may have no power while your neighbor does.

WFEC line crews will work from the substations while PowerSouth crews conduct some of the repairs mentioned above. WFEC linemen concentrate on repairing the three-phase feeders, or main lines, leading from the substations first. The closer a home is to the substation, the sooner power will be restored to that home.  Next, the first sets of breakers on a section of line are fixed. Each section is then energized before moving on to the next set of breakers while gradually working out to the single-phase taps. (See the related diagram located on pages ).

In order to expedite the restoration process, it is very important that all WFEC member-owners have updated their account information with the cooperative. Please take a moment to review your next billing statement to ensure that all the information associated with your account is correct. It is very important that WFEC has the proper phone number on file. If an outage could be reported from a cellular phone, please make sure the cooperative has that number on file or the automated outage response system will not recognize the location of the outage being reported.