Farmers RECC crews with the help of mutual aid assistance have continued to make progress today. We currently have approximately 2,200 members without service, down from more than 6,000 at the height of the outage event. While this progress is encouraging, hazardous conditions—including ice, snow, fallen trees, difficult terrain and the brutally cold temperatures—continue to slow the restoration process.
Members who rely on oxygen or other medical equipment or members who do not have an alternate heat source are strongly encouraged to make alternative plans during extended outages, including utilizing your county's warming centers.
Members should be prepared for complete power restoration to take until at least Wednesday, barring any complications.
Some members may be questioning why their neighbor has power and they don’t. This could be for a number of reasons. Your home may be served by a different substation, line or transformer. Your line could also be damaged at your service line or service connection point. It is also important to check your panel box to make sure you don’t have any tripped circuit breakers.
We have also received several questions from members who have received their daily usage readings, despite being without power during that time. Our metering system estimates a daily reading based on your location’s historic usage. If our meters do not receive a reading, they will automatically estimate. Once power is restored and we regain communications with the meter, it will reset to the actual reading.
We want to take a moment to say thank you to the mutual aid crews assisting us with restoration.
Clinton County Electric Cooperative
Coles-Moultrie Cooperative
Menard Electric Cooperative
Monroe County Electric Cooperative
Rural Electric Convenience Cooperative
Inter-County Energy
5 Star Electric
Townsend Tree Service
Glasgow Electric Plant Board
Steel Rock Services, LLC
In addition, we want to say a special thank you to Botts Table and Board, Between the Buns and Danny and Teresa Bishop for keeping our folks fed during this time.
Our Outage Viewer shows real-time outage information, including crew assignments. Learn more at farmersrecc.com/outagecenter. Due to the complexity of this restoration and the number of crews involved, we’re unable to provide exact crew locations or future dispatch details.
To allow our employees to focus solely on restoration efforts, our offices will be closed today, January 26 and Tuesday, January 27.
Despite the brutal temperatures and challenging conditions - we remain all-hands-on-deck and will continue to work hard and work safe toward complete restoration for our members.