EMCs Making Tremendous Progress on Outages

TUCKER, Ga. – Over the last 24 hours, the electric membership cooperatives (EMCs) in Georgia have restored service to more than 280,000 members since Tropical Storm Zeta slammed Georgia. At 4:30 a.m., 117,000 members remain without power primarily in metro Atlanta, north and west Georgia, areas which suffered significant damage as a result of torrential rains and wind gusts exceeding 70 mph.

EMCs have made great progress repairing and, in some cases, completely rebuilding portions of the transmission and distribution network. Hundreds of additional EMC linemen are focused on power restoration from Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Georgia Transmission Corp. reports that 74 of the 80 electrical substations that were knocked out by Zeta are now at full operation. In addition, nearly 20 high-voltage transmission lines have been repaired or replaced. These supply-side operations must be functional in order for EMCs to have electricity to distribute to their customers, so the recovery efforts have been a two-part process.

EMC crews are also encountering thousands of downed trees and limbs and hundreds of damaged or destroyed power poles and power lines. The average time to replace a broken distribution pole is four hours, which is a good example of why restoration times have been and will be lengthy for some members.

As EMCs completed damage assessments, many discovered that the damage inflicted by Zeta is some of the worst Georgia has seen in a number of years, comparing this storm to other memorable and devastating events such as Hurricanes Matthew, Michael and Irma; and Winter Storms Benji and Pax.

Note to media: Outage information is available and updated every 15 minutes at www.georgiaemc.com/outages.

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. To learn more, visit www.georgiaemc.com and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

Georgia Transmission Corporation plans, builds and maintains more than 3,100 miles of high-voltage powerlines and 650 substations that deliver electric power to 38 electric membership corporations (EMCs) across the state. Georgia Transmission and our member EMCs are not-for-profit cooperatives that serve approximately 4.1 million people in nearly 70 percent of the state’s land area. See www.gatrans.com.

###