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JACKSONVILLE, FL -- There's not much that makes you feel left in the dark more than a power outage. For example, you can't watch the news because you don't know when the power will be back on.
It's a feeling many people on the First Coast may remember from two years ago. A chain of events left much of Jacksonville in the dark. While many were left wondering what happened, there is a plan to change that for customers.
That's good news to customers like Perri Ann Boone who experienced an outage just this week. She was stuck outdoors because she says there was, "No electricity. And it's been off for several days this week. And it's off for several hours when it goes off." She said she's not getting any answers. Boone says, "We have called today and they give us now answer. They have no idea. They say they don't even know what's wrong or where the problem is." Neither does JEA customer service representative Mary West who says, "I feel frustrated because I could not give the customers the information that they were asking and I kind of had to play around the question and give them to the best of my knowledge what I saw." But that's about to change according to Bruce Dugan, Director of Customer Sales and Service for the Jacksonville Electric Authority. He told First Coast News, "We're going to be able to give the customer more information in a timely manner. And we're going to offer things to the customer that before we weren't able to offer to them." It's all possible with the help of a new JEA program called EOIS or the Enhanced Outage Information System.
Dugan says, "What we've done is we've constructed a system that will give you the information we have today right now at this moment." The system works like this. If you lose power at your home, JEA reps will now be able to call you back and let you know when your power is back on. Dugan says, "We can call your cell phone. We can text page you. We can e-mail you at the office. If you don't want to stay at home when you're powers off, go to the mall. Enjoy the air conditioning. Go shopping. We'll call you when the power is in and you'll know it's good to go home." And get back indoors to see as Boone says just one thing from all of this heat, "Comfort. That's the main thing in weather like this."
The JEA spent seven-hundred thousand dollars to develop the new system and have been testing it in several homes countywide. The new system should be available to all customers free of charge in about four to six weeks.
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 Created: 6/19/2004 1:12:43 PM Updated: 6/19/2004 8:18:39 PM Suggest News Tips & Story Leads Submit Video & Pictures |
First Coast News Staff
