Power Outage Information - Madison Gas and Electric - Madison, Wisconsin (2024)

Madison Gas and Electric (MGE) crews continue working to restore service to electric customers still impacted by Tuesday evening’s damaging storms with hurricane-force winds. About 500 separate outage incidents are impacting MGE electric customers, making this the largest outage event in recent history for MGE.Approximately two-thirds of total impacted customers have been restored as of midday Wednesday—the storm caused outages to nearly 44,000 customers at its peak.

With widespread damage, this is the largest number of individual incidents MGE has experienced at one time, surpassing the June 2022 storm event that caused more than 300 separate incidents. Each incident represents a location with varying complexity to restore service. More than 250 of the total incidents reported currently impact a single customer.

The biggest challenges continue to be the high volume of broken poles and downed lines. It often takes the majority of a workday to repair one broken pole. MGE has numerous broken poles; a full damage assessment is continuing.

Some outages could last multiple days
Due to the hundreds of individual incidents, some electric customers could be without service into the weekend. Impacted customers should plan now to be without power for multiple days.

MGE crews will continue working to restore service safely as quickly as possible. We currently do not have an estimated restoration time for those customers who remain without service.

Damage assessment will continue throughout the day. MGE crews continue to target the outages/incidents impacting the largest number of customers first. We also continue to add crews from other utilities as they become available, in addition to dispatching all available MGE crews.

Mutual assistance helping to double number of crews working to restore service
MGE has requested and is receiving significant numbers of additional crews from other utilities and contractors to assist with this complex restoration event. We expect to have double the number of crews working to restore service compared to a typical workday. The storm that impacted the Madison area also impacted several other parts of the state and region, meaning that many of our neighboring utilities also are impacted by storm damage. We appreciate our customers’ patience as our crews and those from our contractors and utility partners work safely to meet the needs of our communities.

Stay tuned tomge.comfor updates on our storm restoration efforts. MGE will provide another online update on our service restoration efforts later today.

Report downed wires to MGE. Stay away from downed lines, which could be tangled in storm debris.
Public safety is our first priority. With the number of downed power lines, we remind everyone to stay clear of damaged areas and never approach a downed power line or anything that comes in contact with it. Always assume a power line is energized and extremely dangerous and stay away. If you see a downed line, please notify MGE immediately by calling(608) 252-7111 or 1-800-245-1123. Visit oursafety pageto learn more.

Customers who have not yet reported a loss of power should call MGE at(608) 252-7111or 1-800-245-1123 to report an outage or any incidents of downed wires.

Learn about our service restoration process
All outage restoration follows a five-step process. In small incidents, these steps are often done by a single crew and can be accomplished very quickly. In major outages, however, several parts of the company become involved.Learn more about our process.

Sometimes you may notice an MGE vehicle or employee/crew in your neighborhood for a while without your service being restored. Here are some of the reasons: