Power Outages & Restoration

The Stillwater Electric Utility is one of 276 of the nation's public power utilities to earn the Reliable Public Power Provider (RP3) designation from the American Public Power Association for the highest degree of reliable and safe electric service.

The following chart illustrates the leading causes of why you may have been without electricity sometime in Fiscal Year 2022. We'll use this data to identify areas that could benefit from technology or areas of concern needed to improve reliability.

How Power is Restored During a Major Storm

Restoring power after a major storm is a big job that involves much more than simply throwing a switch or removing a tree from a line. Our top priority is to restore power safely to the greatest number of customers in the shortest time possible.

In the event of lightning, precautions must be taken to ensure the safety of our electric crews. Crews must wait until lightning storms are an acceptable distance away before restoring power.

The following steps show the order that crews take to restore your power:

1. The City of Stillwater is supplied by three high voltage transmission sources. Each source is an input into the system that supplies power to all the City's electric customers. Thousands of people are served by one high-voltage transmission line, so these lines get attention first.
2. The City of Stillwater has 6 distribution substations, each serving hundreds or thousands of customers. When a major outage occurs, these distribution substations are checked. A problem here could be caused by a failure in the system supplying the substation. If the problem can be corrected at the substation level, power may be restored to a large number of people.
3. Main distribution supply lines are checked next if the problem cannot be addressed at the substation. These supply lines carry electricity away from the substation to neighborhoods and businesses. When power is restored at this stage, all consumers served by this supply line could see the lights come on, as long as there is no problem further down the line.
4. The final supply lines, called tap lines, carry power to the utility poles or underground transformers outside houses or other buildings. Line crews fix the remaining outages based on restoring service to the greatest number of customers.
5. Sometimes damage will occur on the service line between your house and the transformer on the nearby pole. This can explain why you have no power when your neighbor does. Crews need to know if you have an outage here so a service crew can repair it.
6. Customers are responsible for damage to the service installation on the building. Call a licensed electrician to make repairs then call the Stillwater Electric Utility at (405) 372-3292 so power can be restored.