Maintaining the Grid

From providing energy for customers’ homes and businesses to responding when severe weather hits, maintaining reliable service is an integral part of what we do every day. In fact, we keep the lights on more than 99.9% of the time! We have a team of operators who are monitoring the grid 24/7, ensuring you have the energy you need every hour of every day when you flip that switch.

We Maintain, Inspect and Improve the Grid

We have a proactive plan of scheduled maintenance and inspections to help ensure safe, reliable service.

    • We are replacing power lines buried over 40 years ago with more modern, reliable lines. When this project is finished, we’ll have upgraded 7,000,000 feet of power lines! Learn more about our Underground Cable Replacement Project.
    • We build and maintain thousands of miles of power lines and hundreds of substations to ensure safe, reliable service. View a map of our latest major projects, like new transmission lines and substations, that help keep our system reliable.
    • To prevent power loss and hazards due to fire, our crews clear brush within a 20-foot radius of power poles in the Idaho desert. This creates a defensible space around power poles, reducing the number of poles lost during wildfires. It also improves safety and reliability for customers. Watch this video to learn more.

To protect our crews during maintenance work, we sometimes need to turn off power as a safety precaution. If we need to turn off power in your area for scheduled maintenance work, we’ll let you know in advance (typically at least two days’ notice) and update you if anything changes. A scheduled maintenance outage might not begin or end at the precise times indicated in your notice. Power might also be turned on and off more than once during the outage period.

We Monitor and Balance the Grid

Energy is a real-time business. When you flip the switch, the energy that comes to your home, farm or business was generated just a fraction of a second ago at a power plant that might be hundreds of miles away. We work hard to keep that system of supply and demand in precise balance around the clock.

See how we invest in the grid to ensure safe, reliable, affordable energy as we pursue our goal of 100% clean energy by 2045.

We Meet or Exceed Reliability Standards

Our equipment is built to meet or exceed industry standards and withstand the snow, ice, and wind that Idaho winters often bring. To help prevent power problems and outages, we follow standards set by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation and Western Electricity Coordinating Council.