Wright-Hennepin members' power restored after severe storms cause outage

Posted on July 5, 2011

Rockford, Minn. (July 5, 2011) — All of the almost 7,000 Wright-Hennepin members who lost power as a result of severe storms on July 1 had their power restored no later than the afternoon of July 3.

The lengthy duration of the outage was caused by extensive tree damage in western Wright County, resulting in significant line damage and time-consuming repairs.

WH kept restoration times as brief as possible, as all available line crews worked around the clock until restoral. WH also enlisted the help of other utilities’ line crews and tree contractors to help keep restoration times to a minimum.

WH keeps its customers informed about outages through a real-time power outage map at whe.org, and by posting updates on its Facebook page at facebook.com/WrightHennepin, and its Twitter profile at twitter.com/Wright_Hennepin.

“I’d like to thank all of our members who were affected by this storm for their patience during our restoration efforts,” said WH President and CEO Mark Vogt. “Limiting and keeping outage times to a minimum is our highest priority, and we’re constantly making improvements to our system to better serve our members.”

WH is a member-owned non-profit electric utility that provides electric power to Wright County and the western part of Hennepin County. The cooperative has been a corporate citizen in this area since 1937 and currently serves more than 46,000 electric accounts. The utility started its security division in 1989 that provides local home security solutions as well as monitors alarm systems for more than 50,000 customers in 32 states and three Canadian provinces.