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 info which comes in, the better information the computer has and the faster a crew can get where it needs to go.

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 by their very nature inexact, we provide a range of times in order to try and give you a general idea as to when work will be complete and power will be restored.

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.

No, it means we have lots of customers! While rare, things like animal interference and motor vehicle accidents can cause an outage for small groups of customers even on a seemingly quiet day, weather-wise. We have crews standing by 24 hours a day ready to roll in the event of any power interruption and most of the time, outages are restored within a few hours.

Typically, but not always. Sometimes, in the minutes immediately after an outage is reported, the system is waiting on additional data before it declares all of a group of customers are impacted by the same issue. When this happens, the map displays multiple bubbles for brief periods. Our dispatchers are trained to recognize these situations when they occur and make sure the crew is headed to where it needs to go.

Electric outages can have several different causes, and while Unitil works hard to maintain its system, things like severe weather and motor vehicles accidents will always have the potential to cut power to customers. A video showing the different ways Unitil restores power to customers can be found here.

The outage map is built to work on standard computer operating systems and web browsers. There may be a specific issue with your browser we can’t help with, but we encourage you to call our Customer Service to make sure the map is working properly on our end. Additional information is also posted on our Twitter feed, @Unitil. 

The electric outage map is a window to see the types of outages our crews are already aware of, and 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 call customer service or report your outage online if you lose power to assure your issue is in the system!

Customers can report their electric outage by calling our customer service line at 1-888-301-7700 or by reporting online here.