Frequently Asked Questions

Sometimes obstacles blocking access to our power lines can slow the restoration process. That could include downed trees, blocked roads, unplowed or flooded streets or dangerous situations. Conditions throughout the system can also cause delays. Several small scattered outages can be more time consuming to repair because they involve individual stops to reconnect lines to each home.

Yes, it will come back. Although your restoration is important to us, sometimes there are more urgent priorities that need to be addressed, such as public safety hazards, critical care, emergency operations centers and communication centers.

The truck may also be on the way to a transmission line, substation or circuit outage that will restore the greatest number of customers at the same time, you included. Our crews work round the clock during an outage, so they will return to your location as soon as they can if you remain without power.

It could be that your neighbor is served on a different circuit, but there could be trouble in just your section of the line or in the equipment that services you directly. Or, the cause of the outage could be an individual service problem at your home, unrelated to Unitil.

No public-facing outage map for natural gas customers is planned at this time, though we are constantly reviewing new ways to provide information to customers and will continue to review new options as technology makes them available.

ETR stands for “estimated time of restoration,” and is our best estimate as to how long it will take to restore power. As estimates are inexact by their very nature, we provide a range of times to try and give you a general idea as to when work will be complete and power will be restored.

There is a lag of a few minutes between the information on the map and the information our crews are working from, but the data you see on the map is basically the same as what our operations teams are working from. Occasionally, there will be a delay in an outage getting removed from the map, and crews need to confirm work is complete before the map is cleared.

If you are experiencing a loss of power to your home, you can report your outage online or call our Customer Service line at 1-888-301-7700.

When you report your outage, a Customer Service representative makes sure that your address is loaded into our outage management system. The computer then looks at all the different calls coming in and takes its best guess based on the information which comes in as to where the trouble originated. A crew is then dispatched directly to the outage. This is another reason why it is so important to call in any outage — the more information that comes in, the better information the computer has, and the faster a crew can get where it needs to go.

The electric outage map is a window into seeing the types of outages our crews are already aware of, and it is based on the information relayed from our Customer Service team. While small delays in updates to the map are always possible, if your outage isn’t on the map, it may not have been reported yet. Always report your outage online or call Customer Service at 1-888-301-7700 if you lose power to ensure your issue is in the system.

First, log in to your online profile. On the main profile page, click the “Manage” button to the right to view the accounts you have associated with your profile. There are areas to add or group your accounts here.

Once you’ve added (or removed) your accounts on your profile, municipal customers are able to export this data set by clicking the “Spreadsheet Version” link at the bottom of the page. This has been very helpful for municipal customers that typically manage many accounts at various locations because it consolidates all of your accounts into one sheet for review.