SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — When monsoon storms are busy outside, a team of SRP employees is busy inside their distribution operation center. Joel Stitt, is the manager of the room, overseeing operations during some of Arizona's most active weather days.
“They’ll answer all of the calls from crews working in those geographic areas," Stitt said. "They’ll respond to any outages that happen.”
The high-security room at SRP is where teams track any power outages that might happen in the Valley, Stitt said.
“The way we know it’s impacting our system is we start to have breakers that are tripping," Stitt said. "We can see those on our screens. We can see which way the storm is moving and outages start to form."
During a more severe monsoon storm, the size of the team in the room doubles.
"It also calls in a duty supervisor who can oversee things and make sure any needs in there are met," he said.
The operation center is staffed 24/7, 365 days a year. And outside of this room, there are also things Valley neighbors can do to help power stay on during storm outbreaks.
"Any lawn chairs, umbrellas, trampolines even that are not tied down can get blown not only into your neighbor's yard but into our line as well," Stitt said. "That causes another outage we have to go out and respond to and takes customers out of power.”
SRP also provides a link to report outages that may happen near you, so their crews can restore them as soon as possible.
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