‘Planned outage’ caught some by surprise

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Put your phone number into the Eversource website and it will tell you this power outage was planned.

Updated 12:50 pm

There were 1,000 customers without power on Martha’s Vineyard for about an hour and a half in what an Eversource spokesman says was a “planned outage.” Many of the customers affected were in Tisbury in the Beach Road and State Road areas, the spokesman said.

Power went out just after 11 am and the Eversource spokesman said that if all went well power would be restored by 1 pm. It was restored by 12:30 pm. 

Just how customers were notified of the outage was a bit of a mystery. The Times, which is affected by the outage, received no prior notice of the outage.

When asked how customers were notified, Eversource spokesman Chris McKinnon said, 

“We did a phone blast out to customers at 6 o’clock last night…” 

McKinnon went on to say, “Typically it’s either a letter in the mail or a phone call.”

3 COMMENTS

  1. Eversource never seems to have a problem reaching me if my bill is overdue. Seems they could try a little harder to reach customers when they are planning to shut the power off.

  2. I’m signed up to receive phone messages from Eversource. I think that happened due to past power outages and my request via their automated system to be notified of power outage updates. I received a call last week advising me of the pending outage and I received another phone call yesterday to remind me. The message told me the exact time of the outage and explained that Eversource had to do an upgrade that would require shutting down power in my area. It’s worth being signed up for their phone messages for precisely this reason.

  3. I received an email after the power went back on. I didn’t receive any prior notification.

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