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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As more than 2,000 Evergy employees work to restore power to thousands, the utility is keeping customers updated of its progress through text messages.
Evergy customers across the Kansas City area who were among the 186,000 customers who lost power during Friday’s storm might have received text messages indicating their power was out. The utility also provides text messages on approximate times power may be restored.
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Chuck Caisley, Evergy’s senior vice president and chief customer officer, said Saturday the text message are reliable, but sometimes the situation in the field can change.
Caisley provided an example of crews working to repair a large outage of say, 2,000 customers on a circuit.
“If people are on this circuit that are served, we will send a text notification that says, ‘We think your power will be restored in three to six hours,’” Caisley explained. “What we can’t tell is if there are people that have additional damage specific to their area.”
Caisley estimates that in the example, 1,500 or 1,600 of the 2,000 customers on the circuit will have their power restored in the time window suggested by the text message. For the remainder, additional work may be needed.
“We try to make them as accurate as possible, but the situation is very fluid, especially in an outage situation like this where at one time we had 186,000 customers off,” Caisley said.
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Friday’s storms knocked out power to more than 240,000 Evergy customers through the event, peaking at 186,000 customers early Friday night.
Caisley said “a big chuck” of the restoration could be completed Saturday, but additional restoration work could stretch into Sunday and the first part of next week.
Customers seeking additional information or updates on the outage map can visit Evergy’s website.
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