Extreme Winds Cause Power Outage for 19,952 MEC Members

Bullhead City, AZ – On Wednesday, November 6, at 6:04 a.m. the high winds blew debris into an MEC substation causing damage to the energized equipment. This outage affected 19,952 Mohave Electric Cooperative (MEC) members in the Bullhead City and Fort Mohave areas of the western service territory. Once the crews cleared the debris, they isolated the equipment to make repairs and used switching to restore power to affected members. At 6:39 a.m. 15,745 members were restored. Once further switching and repairs were done 1,172 members were restored at 7:21 a.m. and the remaining 3,035 members were restored at 7:22 a.m.

Switching is rerouting power to restore electricity to members as soon as possible. The areas affected had redundancy built into the system so that crews were able to use switching to reroute the power as quickly as they did.

Outage restoration is important to Mohave Electric Cooperative. Please remember, there are many ways to report an outage. You can call our toll-free line at (844) 632-2667, text “outage” to 55050 from a number linked to your MEC account or use our SmartHub® application on your mobile device to report the outage. You can also track outages on our website’s Outage Center page.

Founded in 1946, Mohave Electric Cooperative is a not-for-profit utility providing reliable, cost-effective power to 38,028 members, 45,044 meters, with more than 1,577 miles of line spanning areas from Bullhead City to Topock on the west, Hualapai to Burro Creek to the south, and Nelson to the east.