Here at Sussex Rural Electric Cooperative, we are committed to keeping your lights on and are constantly working to improve our storm-time power restoration process. 

Despite this pledge, due to circumstances beyond our control sometimes your power will still go out. This can be due to a variety of factors, such as:

  • Weather:

Power can be affected by weather events like extreme temperatures (either heat or cold), ice buildup on power lines, lightning strikes, or high winds and heavy rain from storms. In severe cases, older power lines can be completely broken by strong winds during major storms!

  • Animals:

Small animals, typically squirrels or birds, can short circuit pole-mounted electrical equipment like transformers or fuses.

  • Tree limbs: 

Falling trees or tree limbs coming in contact with power lines can affect the flow of power to homes. During storms, these are the leading causes of outages. This is why Sussex Rural Electric strongly advocates against planting trees too close to power lines and invests heavily in trimming tree limbs in our service area. Visit our Tree Management page for more details on how SREC works to prevent blinks and outages caused by tree limbs.

  • Vehicle accidents:

Accidents involving road vehicles or farm and construction equipment can damage poles, sometimes even breaking them.

Outage Viewer

Our outage viewer will show you active outages in our service territory and if you, a family member, or friend has lost their power, you can use this to keep track of how restoration of power is going.

Types of Outages

There are two different types of power outages: momentary outages and sustained outages. These affect our members, and influence our response, in different ways.

A momentary outage, also known as a "power blink," is when your lights blink or you lose power for just a few moments. If you are out and come home to a blinking digital clock set at "12:00," your home most likely experienced a power blink while you were away. These outages happen when automatic devices on the co-op's power lines detect a problem, like a small animal on the lines, and temporarily shut off power to protect the power lines and the flow of electricity from real potential damage. This works much like resetting a circuit breaker does in your home, as a way to protect your home's wiring when an electrical overload or short occurs. This type of outage is inconvenient, but this is a way of preventing larger outages and power is restored by these devices within moments.

A sustained outage is a total loss of power in a localized portion of the service area. These are the longer outages that everyone dreads. Occasionally, these outages are planned by your-co-op to allow us to safely perform equipment repairs and maintenance. Members affected by planned outages will be notified ahead of time. But if you experience a sustained outage without notice, it's likely the result of storms, vehicular accidents, or downed trees affecting power lines. In cases like these, please follow the steps laid out below to verify and report the power outage. Sussex Rural Electric will address the problem as quickly as possible.

Reporting an Outage

If you need to report an outage, please contact us at 1(877) 504-6463. Calling this number gets the information to us and our viewer faster.

You can also report an outage by text. To do so, you first need to have your cell phone number in our database. These instructions will give you all the details. If you have already given us your current cell phone you can start the setup procedure right here.

In the event of a power outage please follow these procedures:    

  1. Check all circuit breakers, fuses, and other controls to be sure that the problem is not with your equipment.

  2. Call a neighbor to find out if they have power or look to see if neighbors have their lights on.

  3. Call Sussex Rural Electric at 1-877-504-6463 to report power outages and have your account number or phone number available. Please do not use Facebook or email to report power outages. 

  4. Leave your freezer shut. Food will stay frozen longer if the door remains closed.

  5. Turn off all major appliances (ovens, electric heaters, washers/dryers, water heaters, etc.) until power is restored to your area.

  6. Leave some lights on in your home so you can tell when power is restored.

  7. About 10 minutes after power is restored, gradually turn your appliances back on.

Tune in to local media for outage updates during widespread outages. Sussex Rural Electric is regularly in contact or sends bulletins to radio stations throughout the co-op’s service territory. Be sure to have a portable radio and fresh batteries available. Use the outage map link at the top of this page to see detailed information on outages in our service territory.