Power companies keep up Lowndes reconnection work

Published 2:30 pm Monday, September 4, 2023

VALDOSTA — Lowndes County’s electricity providers kept at it Monday, working through the Labor Day holiday to turn the lights back on following Hurricane Idalia.

Georgia Power, the principal power source for the city of Valdosta, reported 220 customers in Valdosta without power Monday morning, though that number was bouncing around for various reasons, said John Kraft, spokesman for the company.

“It was as low as 100 before bouncing up to 220,” he said.

Most of the outages caused by the hurricane itself have been dealt with, Kraft said. Events since the storm have caused additional outages, including:

— The act of switching customers on a damaged power circuit to an undamaged one, which is used to get customers’ lights back on quickly. Kraft said that later, when the regional power circuits have to be restored to normal, switching customers back to their regular circuits can create brief outages.

— Fresh outages can be caused when trees weakened by the storm fall over or branches fall days after the storm;

— Some homes cannot be immediately reconnected to the grid because the connect point for the power line has been damaged, Kraft said. The power company has to wait until an electrician makes repairs and the house has been cleared by local authorities for reconnection, he said.

Colquitt EMC, which provides power to rural areas and smaller towns, reported almost 6,500 customers across its four-county service region were without power Monday, most of those being in its Valdosta district.