Restoring Power is a Complex Process
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Have you ever wondered why you have power and your neighbor doesn't, or why the convenience store's electricity is on and yours isn't? Electricity gets from power plants to your home over a complex grid of lines and equipment, and the restoration plans following outages are designed to get power back to the most people in the shortest time. High-voltage electricity goes from a generating plant to a substation, from which it is sent to terminal poles to enter specific circuits. Electricity goes from terminal poles to primary poles via primary lines, or "backbones," to then be sent over laterals to the secondary lines, which distribute it throughout neighborhoods. It finally arrives at individual meters from transformers that feed service drops. In outages, restoration crews begin with primary lines that can restore power to perhaps thousands of people. Then they move to lateral lines that can affect hundreds; secondary lines that affect dozens; and finally to service drops at individual homes. This is why homes in the same neighborhoods can be restored at different times and why businesses are sometimes restored first because of their high-traffic locations along primary lines. |
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