During severe weather, you’ve likely experienced your lights blink or returned home to find the clock on your microwave or oven blinking. When this happens, it means there has been a brief disruption of your electric service which could have resulted from a power surge or blink. While the symptoms of surges and blinks can appear similar, what’s happening behind the scenes can be quite different.
Power surges are brief overvoltage spikes or disturbances of a power waveform that can damage, degrade or destroy electronic equipment within your home or business. Most
electronics are designed to handle small variations in voltage; however, power surges can reach amplitudes of tens of thousands of volts that can be extremely damaging to your electronic equipment.
Surges can be caused by internal sources, like HVAC systems with variable frequency drives, or external sources, like lightning and damage to power lines and transformers.
Guthrie County REC encourages all of our member-consumers to install surge protective devices (such as surge protector power strips) to safeguard sensitive electronics
when this happens. If you’re experiencing frequent surges in your home or business and you believe the cause is internal, contact a qualified electrician to inspect your
electrical system.
Power blinks are also brief service interruptions, but they’re typically caused by a fault (short circuit) on a power line or a protective device that’s working in reaction to the fault. Faults can occur through a variety of instances, like squirrels, birds or other small animals contacting an energized power line; tree branches touching a power line; or lightning and other similar weather events. In fact, when it comes to power disruptions caused by critters, squirrels reign supreme. In 2019 alone, squirrels were responsible for more than 1,200 outages.
Any of the events noted above can cause your power to blink, but you may also experience a brief interruption when protective devices that act like circuit breakers are
working to detect the fault. Believe it or not, these brief power blinks caused by protective devices are actually good because that means the equipment is working as it should to
prevent a prolonged outage.
No matter the cause, co-op crews will be on their way to inspect the damage and make necessary repairs after a power outage. And you can help, too! Any time you experience
repeated disruptions to your electric service, please let us know by calling 888-747-2206 and having your account number available.
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