Communicating with customers when you experience outages is critical to maintaining customer satisfaction. But when it comes to major weather events, it’s also important to keep ElectriCities informed on how your community has been impacted. That’s key in helping the ElectriCities Emergency Assistance Program (EAP) operate smoothly, quickly coordinating mutual aid for the communities that need it.
Incorporating your community’s outages on the ElectriCities Outage Map is a simple process.
The map populates using information from members who:
Submit your outages via a link you receive from ElectriCities
OR
Have your outage map integrated to the ElectriCities map.
When a major event is forecast, if your outage map isn’t integrated with the ElectriCities map, our EAP team will request outages from you at pre-announced times—usually in the morning and afternoon. Those times are based on the schedule determined by North Carolina’s State Emergency Response Team, or SERT.
When it’s time to report outages, you’ll receive a text and email from the EAP team. The notification provides a link to a form you can use to submit your outages.
You will:
- Click on the link.
- Confirm your utility from the dropdown.
- Enter number of outages.
- Click “Submit.”
“It’s very important to respond with accurate outages—even if you don’t have any,” says PJ Rehm, Vice President of Grid Innovation & Safety at ElectriCities. “Not only do we want our outage numbers to match what you’re telling your customers, many entities, including SERT, view our map for statewide outage numbers. Accurate numbers help SERT and the ElectriCities EAP determine which areas are most impacted.”
If your outage map is integrated with the ElectriCities outage map, this process happens automatically, so you can skip the steps above. If you have questions about reporting outages, or if you’d like to integrate your outage map with ElectriCities’ map, please contact PJ Rehm.