May 16, 2023
A line of strong thunderstorms caused power outages across East Texas on May 14. The Colony Ridge community near Cleveland has seen several outages during the storm and after, and the Cooperative has information for our members in this area.
“Cooperative linemen temporarily reconfigured how electricity is fed through the area to safely restore service to our consumer-members,” said Rachel Frey Hawkins, chief communications officer. “When flood conditions improved, linemen returned to the area on Monday to identify and repair the root cause of Sunday’s outage.”
Crews found Sunday’s outage had been caused by lightning striking an essential piece of equipment. The second outage occurred as linemen replaced the damaged equipment and routed electricity back to its normal path.
On May 16, an outage was caused by additional lightning damage sustained during Sunday’s storm. The damaged equipment was several miles away from the damage that caused outages on Sunday and Monday, although the resulting outage affected the same consumer-members.
Sam Houston EC shares information about outages on the outage map. Members can also sign up for notifications about their service by text or email.
In response to the rapid growth in this area, Sam Houston Electric Cooperative is constructing a new distribution substation, that is currently 90 percent complete. The new substation is expected to improve service reliability to the entire Colony Ridge area. Sam Houston EC is coordinating with the regional transmission organization to schedule when the new substation will be put in service.
