EMCs Spend Saturday at Full Throttle to Restore Service to Additional Customers

TUCKER, Ga. — EMCs forged ahead today and completed power restoration for an additional 26,000 customers since 5 a.m. Crews have been working non-stop since Thursday to restore service for 400,000 customers who were left in the dark when 70 mph winds gusts from Tropical Storm Zeta tore apart the electric transmission and distribution infrastructure.

EMCs will continue efforts to restore service for the remaining 37,000 EMC customers in metro Atlanta, north and northeast Georgia and are working with an army of additional crews from across Georgia, Kentucky, Florida and Tennessee.

The extended recovery process can be attributed to the type of damage from Zeta. Unlike numerous weather events in recent years, Zeta caused extreme damage to the high-voltage transmission lines and electrical substations that provide electricity to the local EMCs, which distribute it to customers through smaller lines.

At the height of the storm, 20 high voltage transmission lines were down as well as 80 electrical substations. Georgia Transmission Corp. has made great strides to bring these lines and substations back to full operation, and work on the transmission system is largely complete with final repairs imminent.

EMCs have reported historically high numbers of downed trees and power poles, surpassing previous records at many co-ops. Linemen are replacing hundreds upon hundreds of broken poles—which requires as much as four hours per pole.

EMCs continue efforts to bring full restoration to all remaining customers and would like to provide specific timelines, but it is not possible to give an exact day and time due to the challenging conditions and level of damage linemen are facing at each outage. Consequently, some EMCs note that restoration in severely damaged areas may continue thru the weekend.

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.