Keeping the lights on for co-op members is CCEC's top priority. Safe and efficient power restoration requires a coordinated effort, pre-storm planning, and a resilient infrastructure. 

Fortunately for CCEC members, outages are rare and, for the most part, only last a short amount of time. In fact, CCEC has a reliability rating greater than 99.99%, ensuring that power is always there when you need it. But, when major storms like hurricanes impact our area, extended outages are unavoidable. 

So when the power goes out, how do CCEC crews know where to start working? How do you know if your outage has been reported? We’ve got answers to these questions and more, and it all starts with a safe, efficient plan for power restoration.  

We assess the situation first. Every outage is different, and we don’t know how dangerous it is or what equipment might need to be replaced. When responding to outages, we first need to see what happened, then figure out what materials we need and a plan for how to fix the problem(s) without compromising electric flow for the rest of our members.

It’s a team effort. Every one of the co-op’s employees are working to get your power restored as soon as possible. Our customer service representatives are taking your calls, engineers and field staff are surveying damage, our vegetation management team is clearing hazards, dispatchers are organizing crews, and communicators are keeping everyone informed of progress or potential dangers. When your power goes out, we all work together as quickly and safely as possible to get you back to normal.

Restoration is normally prioritized by the largest number of members we can get back on in the shortest amount of time. Our crews first access transmission lines, then look for potential problems at the substation level. They then move on to check main distribution lines, tap lines, and finally individual services.

You need a backup plan. If you depend on electricity for life support purposes, you must have a back-up plan—remember, we don’t always know how long restoration efforts will take. 

Our employees face many dangers. Besides working around high voltage electricity, our crews are on alert for wild animals, weather elements, falling trees and fast-moving cars. If you ever drive past one of our crews working, please move over to help keep everyone safe.

Know where to get information. CCEC has a substation monitoring system that indicates when and where outages occur, as well as an automated metering infrastructure (AMI) system that send us a signal when the power goes out at each meter. Before reporting an outage, check the outage map at outage.carteretcraven.coop and your breakers. If lights come on around you and yours don’t, call us at 252.247.3107. Sign up for outage notifications by texting "CCEMC" to 1.800.682.2217. Text “OUT” to report your outage and “STATUS” for restoration progress.

Flickering lights are a good thing. Some folks mistake flickering lights for outages, but these “blinks” are important because they indicate our equipment worked and prevented a possible outage likely caused by wayward animals, salt buildup, or stray tree limbs on the lines. 

Sometimes it’s a waiting game. Our portion of the power grid is connected to other electric utilities, and we maintain positive relationships with power providers interconnected to our system. If our outage is due to an issue from their feed into our system, we must let them do their repairs and be mindful of what they’re going through to fix it.

We do our best to avoid power disruptions, but they are inevitable from time to time. If the lights go out, know that your co-op team is working as quickly and safely as possible to restore power.