Southwest Tennessee Electric Membership Corporation makes every effort to prevent outages. However, outages do occur sometimes. Damage caused by wind, ice or other bad weather usually occurs at several points in the transmission and distribution system. The goal for STEMC crews is to restore service to the largest number of customers in the shortest amount of time.

When a widespread outage occurs, our crews must first determine if STEMC substations are energized. In the situation depicted below, the substation is energized, so crews then begin checking main distribution lines. They quickly find Problem 1. By fixing Problem 1, service will be restored to the 10 customers in Neighborhood A as well as Member D. Crews see Problem 3, but realize their time will be used more efficiently by fixing Problem 2. This restores service to the 8 customers in Neighborhood B. They continue moving along main distribution lines restoring power to large groups of customers.

Once problems impacting multiple customers have been repaired, the crews then return to Problem 3 and restore service to Member C. Finally Member E will have service restored once Problem 4 is repaired.

Southwest Tennessee Electric Membership Corporation keeps a call center staffed 24 hours a day. To report an outage, please call 1-888-440-1990.