Georgia’s Electric Membership Cooperatives Hit With Outages

As of 3:30 p.m. today, Georgia’s electric membership cooperatives (EMCs) are reporting 244,166 customers without power. The hardest hit areas are in metro Atlanta and the north and west regions of Georgia. Tropical Storm Zeta hit the state with tropical storm-force winds and heavy rain.

From a press release from the Georgia EMC:

At first light, EMC crews descended upon hardest hit areas to begin damage assessments and initial restoration work. This storm in particular, which has generated wind gusts in excess of 70 mph, caused widespread damage to trees, power lines and power poles. In some cases, trees must be cleared from roadways before line workers can access outages.

Unlike most storms in the last several years, Zeta has damaged high-voltage transmission lines and electrical substations that provide electricity to the local EMCs, which distribute it to customers through smaller lines. Georgia Transmission Corp. is working to bring these lines and substations back to full operation, and as that work progresses the restoration efforts to residential customers and businesses will move more quickly.

EMCs began preparations for Tropical Storm Zeta nearly a week ago and have participated in daily discussions with co-ops within Georgia and nearby states to arrange for extra crews, trucks and equipment. Help has arrived or is on the way from unaffected areas in Georgia as well as South Carolina and Tennessee.  Extra help will be vital to the restoration effort which includes impassable roadways in many areas and additional resources to clear debris and trees before work can begin on downed lines.  

The cooperatives are providing assistance through mutual aid agreements between the nation’s nearly 1,000 electric cooperatives, which help one another during natural disasters, including power restoration efforts.

Georgia EMC is the statewide trade association representing the state’s 41 EMCs, Oglethorpe Power Corp., Georgia Transmission Corp. and Georgia System Operations Corp.  Collectively, Georgia’s customer-owned EMCs provide electricity and related services to 4.4 million people, nearly half of Georgia’s population, across 73 percent of the state’s land area.