Part of my house has no power after a PSO outage. What should I do?

After storms and repeated outages, one of the most common calls we get is "I've lost half the power to my house." Sometimes that means one circuit. Sometimes it means the house is getting only half of its service. The fix, and who makes it, depends on which one it is.

How your service works, in one paragraph

A house in the Tulsa area gets two hot legs from PSO, each about 120 volts. Lights and regular outlets use one leg. Big appliances like the air conditioner, electric dryer, range and water heater use both legs together for 240 volts. If one leg is lost, roughly half the regular circuits go dark and every 240-volt appliance stops, even though some lights still work.

The questions we will ask you

1. Did you lose the air conditioner?
2. Do you have an electric stove or dryer, and do they work?
3. Are the lights that still work brighter or dimmer than normal?
4. Do the neighbors have full power?

If the 240-volt appliances are all dead and a share of the lights still work, that pattern points to a lost leg. When it is a single bedroom or a single room, it is more likely one tripped breaker, a tripped GFCI, or a loose connection on that circuit.

Call PSO first when it looks like a lost leg

PSO owns the power lines, the service drop to your house and the meter. If the problem is on their side, they fix it at no charge to you. We will often tell a caller to report it to PSO first and save the cost of a service call, then call back if PSO does not find anything.

When we come out

If you would rather we come out, or PSO says their side is fine, a licensed journeyman tests the service at the meter base and the panel. When we confirm a lost leg on the utility side, we call PSO's service line directly and tell them what we found, which usually gets a faster response than a homeowner's call. When the problem is on your side, such as a failed main breaker, a burned connection, or a damaged meter base or mast after a storm, we quote the repair before any work starts.

What belongs to whom

• PSO: the lines, the service drop and the meter itself.
• You: the weatherhead and mast on the house, the meter base the meter plugs into, the panel and every wire inside.
• More on who fixes what after a storm.

One customer described exactly this situation in a Google review: after repeated PSO outages in one day, part of the house would not come back, and the crew came the next day and took care of it. That is the job: find out which side the problem is on, then fix it or get the right people out.