The remains of Hurricane Helene produced wind gusts in the 60 MPH range as it blew through southwestern Ohio on Friday. AES Ohio says those winds knocked out power to 136,000 of its customers.
Most of those outages have been restored by now but some customers are still in the dark.
To report a power outage, call 877-4-OUTAGE. AES’s Outage Map can be seen here.
WYSO’s Mike Frazier asked Mary Ann Kabel, corporate communications director for AES Ohio, about that and other aspects of restoring electrical service after bad weather.
Mary Ann Kabel: With the rain and everything, we had many, many trees down. Trees and limbs and the other debris on our power lines and electrical equipment caused severe damage. So we concentrated on the hospitals, industries. We have a whole list of those high priority places along with our customers. So our focus is on getting as many customers up as possible. And with that, we're encountering other circumstances and very specific details that we have to do for that particular outage.
For instance, an outage could have a wire down, and the pole could be broken, too. And also there could be terrain there that is soft because of all the rain. So we're finding different things in those different situations where we have the outages, and that time is taking a little bit longer than when we can restore power to a large portion of our service territory based on how those customers are served.
Mike Frazier: What is involved in restoring power? Is it just a matter of reconnecting wires?
Kabel: In a storm situation, we have several crew members that have different responsibilities. We have scouts that go out and find out what the situation is so that when the vegetation crew comes in and the line crew comes in, they know what circumstances they're dealing with. And in this particular storm, there was so much vegetation or trees that were down on our power lines and our electrical equipment that the vegetation crews had to go first. And that entails making sure that the line is de-energized. And then they'll go and they'll take the debris off the line so our line crews can come in and restore the power.
But in this storm, they're very mature trees, very damaging to our equipment, bringing down not just the pole and the wire, but perhaps a transformer knocking out several hundreds of customers.
Frazier: How soon after a storm can crews start repairing power outages, or can they work on the power outages during a storm or a bad weather event?
Kabel: It really depends on the storm. There's a variety of factors that come into play. Wind, snow, ice, rain. So it depends on the severity of that. It is not safe to put up a bucket from one of our trucks when winds are in excess of 20 MPH. So definitely that slows down restoration, but more importantly, the safety of our crews.
Frazier: How are things today compared to when the remains of a hurricane called Ike that came through our area in 2008? Are there any differences between then and now?
Kabel: Ike had winds upwards of 75 MPH, and the number of people that were impacted in our service territory was over 500,000. At that time, it took the better part of two and a half weeks to restore power to all our customers. That was on September 14th, 2008. So now here we are in 2024. Our infrastructure has been improved. And increased reliability has been built in.
Frazier: Why not bury power lines? Why keep them above ground where they are more vulnerable to the environment?
Kabel: With above ground lines, you can easily spot some of the outage issues or problems because you can see it above you. That being said, new technology has come a long way with the infrastructure improvements to our poles and wires that help us with the above ground.
Plus, we have a whole network of above ground lines that have been there for decades. But to change everything to underground is a very expensive path. The other thing with underground, they're not immune to outages either, although the insulation that contains the electrical wire has layers of protection. Those too are subject to the environment.
Frazier: Will there be any effort to begin burying existing overhead lines?
Kabel: No. New subdivisions — most likely they'll choose underground over above ground. But the current architecture that's already above ground will remain above ground.
Safety is our number one priority for our crews and our customers. So in advance of the storm, we are always sending out strong communications about how to prepare. And AES Ohio, like many utilities across the U.S., monitor the weather 24 seven, 365 days of the year. So with that said, we take those preparations in advance so that we make sure that we have the right staffing, the right equipment and the people to do the job ahead. We have to plan for the worst and hope for the best.
