Outage Information

During an outage, Eastern Illini provides Public Service Announcements to all major radio and television stations within the affected area. You can also check the cooperative's Web site www.eiec.coop for information on major sytem outages. 


What should you do when the power goes out?

Call 800-824-5102 to report any power outage.

When you call to report an outage, please include the following information:

1. Member's name on the account.
2. Account number.
3. Phone number of person at the account location.
4. Service address.
5. Meter serial number (found on your monthly bill).

Having this information available prior to an outage will reduce your frustrations and will assist Eastern Illini in the restoration process.

If you depend on medical equipment for life-support, we recommend that you purchase a back-up power supply or arrange to stay with family or friends. In a major outage, we are unable to give you priority in restoring your electric service.

How do we decide how to restore power?

Our goal is to restore service to the greatest number of members in the shortest amount of time. Because of the interconnected nature of an electric distribution system, we must start our work at the power source and work out toward the individual services along the system. Hazardous conditions, such as downed power lines, must be attended to quickly.

These are the service restoration priorities:

  1. Transmission lines: High voltage lines that move bulk electricity from a generating plant to a substation or between substations.
  2. Substations: Substations are electrical facilities that contain equipment for switching or regulating the voltage of electricity. These lower the amount of electrical voltage from transmission lines so that the electricity can be transmitted through distribution lines.
  3. Main distribution lines: The 7,200-volt lines that you see along roadways.
  4. Tap lines: Electric feeder lines with limited capacity that run from a main distribution line and serve small numbers of consumers.
  5. Individual service: This is the line that runs from the pole transformer to your electric meter.

Installed on our system are a series of protective devices known as OCR's. These act like circuit breakers to confine an outage to a specific area and limit the number of members affected by a power interruption. For example, if a tree falls on a tap line only that line would be without service. Other members served from the main distribution line would still have service, although their lights may blink momentarily.

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