MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Memphis Light Gas and Water spent millions to improve its infrastructure after last year's ice storms left hundreds of thousands of people without power or heat at some point, and it appears those investments have paid off.
MLGW is reporting less than 1,000 customers without power on Wednesday morning, or less than 1 percent of the company's customers. This represents a far cry from the impacts of the February 2022 ice storms, which impacted more than 240,000 MLGW customers.
Public criticism of MLGW after last year's issues prompted the company to create an Outage Improvement Team and an improved text alert system to keep customers more up-to-date on the length of their outage.
Nearly 20,000 MLGW customers were impacted by power outages from a snow storm in February 2021 as well.
Since last year's storms, MLGW says it also has adjusted its damage assessment strategy and worked to reduce the number of trees that could bring down power lines or damage homes.
"We've trimmed 426 miles of tree line, and we've replaced 692 wooden poles, we've replaced 22 substation circuit breakers, we've replaced more than 13.5 miles of underground cable, and we've installed 124 distribution automation devices," said Gale Jones Carson, Vice President of Community & External Affairs for MLGW.
The distribution automation devices work to automatically to reduce how many customers are impacted when MLGW lines are damaged.
Carson said more than 5,000 customers were without power Monday night, but that number has dwindled to fewer than 1,000 by Wednesday morning.
Check for outages at MLGW's outage map HERE.
Important MLGW contact information for customers:
- Sign up for Text Alerts: mlgw.com/textalerts
- Outage Reporting: 901-544-6500
- Emergency: 901-528-4465
- Customer Care Center: 901-544-MLGW (6549)