Providing safe and reliable power is essential to United Electric Co-op’s mission. It is our priority to ensure few service interruptions, occasionally nature or human-caused accidents cause power outages. These events can last for hours or can be momentary (power bumps). Our member-owners receive power 99.99% of the time. On average our members are without power less than 30 minutes per year and see less than 8 power bumps. United Electric is consistently above the national and regional averages for reliability amongst electric utilities.
Power Outages
If you experience a power outage:
- Look to see if your neighborhood is without power. This information helps our line crews pinpoint the outage location.
- Check your breakers or fuses in your electrical panel or outside disconnect to make sure that the problem is not with your own equipment.
- You can call the office anytime or check our Facebook page for longer outage details
- To report the outage, call (208) 679-2222. Option 2 will get you to a Member Service Representative or directly to the On-call Lineman after hours
- Any information about what may have caused the outage is helpful for our line crews to restore power. Never get near or touch a downed power line.
Momentary Outages
Why does the power go off and come back on a few seconds later?
These “momentary outages” are necessary for reliability and safety of the electric system. Tree branches, vehicle accidents, lightning, and windstorms cause most of the faults on electric lines. These faults are sensed and cleared with automated equipment which causes the power to shut off for a few seconds. During that momentary outage, the fault may clear, and the equipment turns the power back on. If the fault does not clear the power stays off until line crews are sent out to determine and safely repair the problem.