• Storms: Wind, lightning, ice and snow are the most common causes of widespread outages.
• Trees: High winds may cause branches to come in contact with power lines or for trees to fall through the lines.
• Vehicles: Motor vehicles at times crash into utility poles or other equipment and cause an outage.
• Animals: Squirrels, birds and other animals may contact lines and cause short circuits.
• Excavation digging: Shovels or other digging equipment can cause damage to underground cables.
• High power demand: Heat waves and other times of unusually high power demand can overload our equipment and cause an outage.

Turn off or disconnect any appliances you were using when the outage occurred. Leave one light on so you will know when the power has been restored.

Keep a flashlight and extra batteries handy at all times. If your electricity goes out, use the flashlight to check all rooms for lights or appliances that are working.

If the power does not come back on within a few minutes, or to report a safety hazard, please call (507) 732-5117 or long distance 1-800-927-6864.

Our personnel will do everything possible to restore service quickly. Please help minimize calls to the emergency service number; call again only if your neighbors' power comes back on and your service has still not been restored.

If the outage is widespread, our telephone lines may be busy when you call. Please be patient, your call is important to us. In the event of substantial devastation, we will communicate the situation to the local media as soon as we can determine the situation.