The days of having to wait minute after minute after minute to talk to someone to report your power is out during a storm are over.
At least that was the experience for JEA customers during Hurricane Hermine.
While it was far from a devastating storm, 70,000 customers lost power at some time while the hurricane crossed over Northeast Florida. As many as 17,500 were without electricity at the peak of the outage.
But 83 percent of customers reported their lights were out using digital devices and self-service tools on JEA’s website.
For people who chose to report a power outage the old-fashioned way — talking to a customer service representative — the average wait time was under 60 seconds.
It was the first time the utility has had the opportunity to test the digital communications services that have been put in place over the past few years in a real-world situation, said Chief Customer Officer Monica Whiting on Tuesday during JEA’s monthly board of directors meeting.
“Customers expect constant communication before, during and after a storm,” she said.
More than 600,000 emails and automated telephone calls advising people to prepare went out before the storm, followed by more than 17,000 emails, text messages and automated updates during it.
Improvements to the outage map on jea.com also enhanced communication, Whiting said.
The upgrade allowed customers to click on their street and get an estimate of how long it would be before power was restored.
She said the website map page recorded about 12,000 hits during and after Hermine — equal to the average monthly traffic.
Chief Information Officer Paul Cosgrove said the communication system is the same technology that’s in operation 24/7, 365 days a year, but its value was most evident during the storm.
Had more than eight out of 10 outages not been reported using digital means “there’s no way we could have answered all those phone calls,” he said.
Line crews began restoring power Thursday evening, but the outages didn’t peak until Friday morning, when more than 200 linemen were working 16-hour shifts.
About 180 were still working to restore power early Saturday morning, but by Saturday afternoon, all but a few customers were reconnected, said Mike Brost, vice president and general manager of electric systems.
“The last 2,000 restorations were the slowest,” he said, because they were outages in which a repair would reconnect only a few customers.
In other business, the board scheduled a public hearing on Oct. 18 for a restructuring of electric rates proposed as a way to pay down debt early, allow JEA to offer economic development incentives and lower residential and commercial customers’ monthly bills.
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