Oncor updates city streetlight outages, reporting

Oncor Wichita Falls Area Manager Gordon Drake updated the Graham City Council last week on streetlight outages and how the public can report city outages. At the time of the Thursday, Nov. 10 meeting, over 100 streetlights in Graham had reported outages.

Graham citizens can report outages at the Oncor website at oncorstreetlight.com, call the 24-7 line 888-313-4747, or send an email to contactcenter@oncor.com. Citizens can also call City Hall, at 940-549-3322, to request a city employee to report the outage on the website. Oncor oversees the city of Graham streetlight maintenance.

“Cities report those streetlights to what we call a slot system, which is a streetlight outage reporting system. (...) In my 16 cities, 13 counties that I cover, each city has their own password that can access that slot system, or anybody can go on to the Oncor website and go to the streetlight outage reporting and find that light on that bubble. In that streetlight application, you’ve got yellow bubbles and blue bubbles. These yellow bubbles are the streetlights and blue bubbles are guard lights, security lights, that somebody pays for in their yard or whatever that case,” Drake said. “(...) The streetlight system, if an officer or an individual or community person contacts the city, (...) typically, in the past few years, somebody in the city would go into the slot system and they would identify that light and there’s a little drop down box that says light broke, globe broke, light not working at night. You click on that, put the information in there, you can put a phone number in there for a callback, and when that light is repaired, they’ll contact you by email or phone and say, ‘Hey, the light’s been repaired.’”

GPD Chief Brent Bullock said last year he had night shift officers log the streetlight outages, which totaled over 100, and report them back to the city manager. Graham City Councilman Alex Heartfield requested Bullock submit another report before the next council meeting. GPD reported around 137 streetlights which were out in the city.

“On this list I went through, a number of these that are being reported are security lights, they are not streetlights. There’s a number of lights in this list here that are guard lights on parking lots for car lots down here on (Hwy.) 16. One’s the water station over there across from the police department, that’s a city-owned light that’s on that meter pole for the city. That’s a light belonging to the city. So there are several on here that are actually guard lights, security lights,” Drake said. “Security lights are reported through the individual who is paying for the light. (...) Whoever owns that facility would contact their rep and report their guard lights out and a company crew would repair that guard light, if they’re paying for the light. So a lot of guard lights were put up years ago. When deregulation happened in 2000, guard lights became a competitive market. So the only guard lights that are out there are what’s left. Nobody gets a new guard light, because it’s a non-metered account, it’s considered a competitive market. So the only guard lights the PUC (Public Utility Commission) left out there were grandfathered. So if a customer has a security light in their yard and you move and the person moves in there, (and) if that light’s still there, they have the ability to apply for service for that light and we’ll put it back in service. But once a light’s taken down, a light will never go back up.”

For the full story, see the Wednesday, Nov. 16 edition of The Graham Leader.