How to get power restored after an emergency electrical shutoff
Utility companies will abruptly shut off your electricity if severe flickering, exposed main lines, or crushed wires make the house unsafe. Before they will restore service, you must hire an electrician to perform repairs and pass an inspection, which is difficult to coordinate if you are out of state. Trying to get insurance to pay for these unexpected service upgrades adds an extra hurdle to getting your lights back on.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Using a backup generator to hold over until repairs can be completed
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I am out of state for work amd my daughter informed me Monday that the power was flickering was flickering very badly.”source ↗
“It got so bad that it blew 2 light bulbs.”source ↗
“Duke(power company) shut off the power and I had to get an electrician to perform the repairs and get it inspected before power could be restored. .”source ↗
“Just noticed the jacket on my main lines coming into my house are exposed a little bit.”source ↗
“Trying to get insurance to replace pay for service upgrade because tree came down on house and 16-18 wires including a feed for the sub panel got crushed”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 17Why are equipment service bills so expensive for minor fixes?
- 4Why does touching my breaker panel turn my electric dryer back on?
- 4Why is losing power so disorienting?
- 26Electrician installed an outlet instead of a generator inlet box
- 5Why does my electrical outlet only work sometimes?
- 4HOA tore up my lawn and left it damaged