restoring power

1/15/22

COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina’s electric cooperatives are bringing in extra help ahead of this weekend’s expected wintry precipitation in the Midlands and Upstate.

Eighteen lineworkers from three Louisiana electric cooperatives will arrive in the Palmetto State on Saturday. The crews are from Beauregard Electric Cooperative, Dixie Electric Cooperative and Jeff Davis Electric Cooperative. These crews will assist Laurens Electric Cooperative with any power outages caused by the winter storm.

Three lineworkers from Escambia River Electric Cooperative in Florida will arrive on Saturday to assist Broad River Electric Cooperative in Gaffney.

“Co-ops have each other’s backs,” said Peggy Dantzler, vice president of loss control and training for the state association of electric cooperatives. “We send crews to help others in their time of need, and they gladly return the favor.”

South Carolina’s co-ops have mutual aid agreements with each other and other states to speed up the process of power restoration in times of widespread outages. These agreements help co-ops restore power as safely and quickly as possible.

More information on how cooperatives restore power is available here. Information on how to report an outage is available here, and a live statewide outage map is available here.