What Causes Power Outages — and How to Stay Safe During One

Up here, the power goes out for reasons that have a season to them. Wet spring snow loads up ponderosa branches until they come down on a line. July and August monsoons bring lightning and the kind of wind that finds every weak span. And a hard January cold snap pushes the grid while everyone's heat runs at once. Knowing which kind of outage you're in tells you a lot about how long it'll last and what to do in the meantime.

What actually knocks the power out

Roughly in order of how often we see it in northern Arizona:

• Weather on the lines. Snow-loaded limbs, monsoon wind, and lightning strikes on distribution equipment. These are the long ones, because crews have to find and reach the damage.
• Equipment failure. A failed transformer or a blown fuse on a pole. Usually localized — you'll notice your neighbors are out too, but the next street over is fine.
• Vehicle and animal contact. A pole taken out at an intersection, or a squirrel across a transformer. Short and abrupt.
• Planned maintenance. Announced ahead of time, and the only kind with a reliable end time.
• Something inside your own house. This is the one worth ruling out first.

Is it the utility, or is it your house?

Before you report an outage, take thirty seconds to check. Are your neighbors' lights on? Is the street lighting up? If everyone else has power and you don't, the problem is on your side of the meter.

Then check your panel. A tripped main breaker, or half the house dark while the other half works, points to your service rather than the grid — a lost leg of a 240-volt service will do exactly that. Also look at the mast and service drop from a safe distance: if the conduit coming into the house is bent, pulled loose from the wall, or the wires are sagging low, that's damage that needs both the utility and an electrician, in that order.

Never touch a downed line, and don't assume it's dead because nothing's sparking. Stay well back, keep people and pets away, and call it in.

What to do while it's out

The goal for the first hour is heat, light, and not creating a second problem:

• Turn off or unplug what was running — especially electric heat, the oven, and anything with a motor. When power returns it comes back all at once, and a house full of simultaneous startup loads is how equipment gets damaged. Leave one lamp on so you know when it's back.
• Keep the fridge and freezer shut. A closed refrigerator holds about four hours; a full freezer roughly 48.
• Use flashlights, not candles. Open flame in a dark house with people moving around causes more damage in Arizona than the outage does.
• Hold heat in. Close off unused rooms, keep the doors shut, layer up. A reasonably tight house loses heat slowly even at our temperatures.
• Never run a generator or a grill indoors — not in the garage, not on a covered porch. Carbon monoxide from a portable generator is the single most dangerous part of a long outage, and it's entirely preventable. Twenty feet from the house, away from windows and vents.

Portable generators and the backfeed problem

Plugging a generator into a wall outlet to power the house — sometimes called a suicide cord, which tells you most of what you need to know — pushes electricity backward through your panel and out onto the utility line. It can energize a line a crew believes is dead, and it removes every protection your panel is supposed to provide.

The safe version is a transfer switch or interlock kit installed at the panel. It makes it physically impossible for generator power and utility power to be connected at the same time. Portable generators are fine used correctly: outdoors, with heavy-gauge outdoor extension cords running to the specific things you need, or through a properly installed transfer switch. If outages at your place are frequent or long enough that you're tired of the routine, a permanently installed standby generator handles the switching automatically.

When the power comes back

Restoration is rarely one clean moment. You may get a few flickers, or partial power, while crews switch things around. Bring your loads back gradually rather than all at once, and give the heat and any large appliances a few minutes between them.

The other thing to watch for is surge damage. A restoration spike, or the lightning strike that caused the outage in the first place, can take out electronics, well pump controls, and appliance boards — sometimes days later. If you lost several devices at once, that wasn't coincidence, and a whole-home surge protector at the panel is the standard fix.