Dallas City Wire

Georgetown launches power outage text reporting service

Beginning April 10, Georgetown electric utility customers will receive a text message letting them know they are now enrolled in the City’s real-time, power outage texting service.

Once launched, enrolled customers will be able to report electric outages and receive real-time updates via text message to and from 512-930-8400. Water outages must still be reported by phone, and future updates to the system will include water outages in the texting process.

Customers should still track water and electric outages on the City’s online outage maps and only report outages not already reflected on the maps. The City will not automatically text residents about power outages; instead, customers can send text messages to the system to report outages and learn about status updates.

“When services are interrupted, folks need information quickly, and this system lets us do that,” said City Manager David Morgan. “It’s critical for us to be able to send and receive power outage messages in real-time, and we know our customers are looking forward to having a more automated process to report and learn updates about outages.”

The City will automatically sign up residents using the phone number(s) associated with their utility account(s). Customers will also be able to enroll by texting ELECTRIC to 512-930-8400.

“The success of this service depends on our customers making sure they’ve given us the contact information for their accounts,” Morgan said.

Electric customers who do not have phones capable of receiving text messages may still report outages not reflected on the online outage maps to 512-930-3640, then press 1. The City’s phone system will recognize the number if it’s tied to the utility account.

TextPower serves 175+ utilities providing text messaging (SMS) solutions for mission-critical applications for immediate communications with customers via their trademarked SmartAlerts platform.

Original source can be found here