The first time the power goes out in Provo, most people reach for their phone and start looking for the number to report it. That reflex is correct nearly everywhere in the country. Here it is, according to the utility itself, usually unnecessary.
Provo runs its own electric system, and the department's published guidance on reporting is unusually direct: you do not need to call. A 24/7 dispatch center watches the grid, and an Outage Management System tells dispatchers when something has failed, generally before a customer would have finished dialing.
That is genuinely useful to know at 11pm with a dead kitchen. It is also incomplete in a way that matters, because the same guidance contains an exception that is arguably more important than the rule.
The exception that matters more than the rule
Provo asks you to call (801) 852-6888 immediately if you heard a pop, if you can see damage to equipment, or if you have other information worth having.
Read that as a division of labor. The Outage Management System is excellent at knowing that current stopped moving through a particular piece of the grid. It has no idea that a transformer made a loud bang, that a branch is resting on a service drop, that a car is against a pole, or that something is smoking behind a fence.
Sensors report effects. Only a person reports causes. When you have a cause, you are holding information the system cannot generate on its own, and that is worth a phone call even at an inconvenient hour.
There is a second, more mundane exception in the same guidance. If your power is out, you are inside Provo city limits, and the outage is not showing up on the city map, call. An outage the map does not know about is one the system may not have detected — a single service drop, a problem on your side of the meter, something small enough to be invisible in aggregate.
Two numbers, and the difference between them
Provo publishes several numbers, and the difference between them is worth ten seconds of attention now rather than five minutes of transfers later.
(801) 852-6888 is the power outage line, staffed around the clock by dispatch.
(801) 852-6000, or 3-1-1 from inside the city, is Provo's general customer service. This is the number for utility accounts, billing, and starting or stopping service.
(801) 852-6999 is the number Provo publishes for reporting low-hanging lines.
911 is for a line down and sparking on the ground.
The city states plainly that Provo Power does not set up utility accounts or take utility payments. So if your power is off because of a billing issue, the outage line is the wrong desk — you want 311. It is a small thing that becomes a large thing during a storm, when the outage line is the one place you do not want holding a queue of billing questions.
Why Provo is different
Most of the country buys electricity from an investor-owned utility or a rural cooperative. Provo does neither. The city has run its own power system since 1940, and describes it as the largest municipally owned electric utility in the state.
Provo Power is also one member of the Utah Municipal Power Agency, a joint agency that schedules power resources across member cities. The practical result is that generation, transmission scheduling, local distribution, tree trimming, metering and dispatch are all functions of a city department rather than services purchased from a corporation headquartered elsewhere.
This has consequences you feel. Rates are set through a municipal process rather than a state rate case. The crews are city employees. The complaint mechanism is a city one. And the service boundary is a city boundary, which is the part that trips people up.
The boundary is the city line
If you live in Provo, your electricity comes from Provo. Step across the municipal boundary and you are likely on a different utility with different numbers, a different map, and different reporting expectations — including, in most cases, the ordinary expectation that customers report outages.
This matters more here than it might elsewhere, because the Provo-Orem boundary runs through neighborhoods people think of as continuous. A student who lived north of the line last year and south of it this year has changed electric utilities without changing cities in any way that felt meaningful. If you have moved recently, confirm who bills you for power before the night you need to know.
Our guide to setting up utilities in Provo covers the account side of that in more detail, including which parts of your city bill are water, sewer, stormwater and garbage rather than electricity.
The outage map, and what it cannot tell you
Provo publishes a live outage map generated automatically by the outage system, with clickable areas that show what is known about each event. It is a good first stop and a poor last one.
What a map like this shows well is scope: whether the problem is your building or your neighborhood. That single distinction changes what you should do next more than any other piece of information. A neighborhood-wide outage is a utility problem and crews are already moving. An outage that stops at your walls is probably your panel, your breaker or your service, and no amount of waiting will fix it.
What the map shows poorly is timing, especially early. In the first minutes of an event, dispatch often knows that something failed without yet knowing what failed. Restoration estimates firm up when a crew has eyes on the equipment, not when the outage is first detected.
Where updates actually get posted
Provo Power says it posts updates on outages affecting more than fifty customers to its Facebook page. That threshold is worth internalizing, because it explains a common frustration: your power is out, and social media says nothing at all. If the event is small, it may never generate a post.
The department's recent public log gives a feel for the rhythm. A July 2026 outage near Dakota and Alaska Avenue ran through a sequence of updates — crews responding to a possible blown fuse with a one-to-two-hour estimate, then power restored after a fuse replacement, then a follow-up noting a transformer that needed replacing, with 27 customers out for about two and a half hours while the work happened.
That is what a normal outage looks like here. Small, local, resolved in hours, sometimes with a second visit for the underlying part.
Texts are coming, and there is something to do now
Provo has announced that starting in fall 2026, Provo Power will send texts to customers experiencing an outage, including an estimated restoration time.
There is a prerequisite, and it is the kind of thing nobody does until it is too late: the phone number attached to your utility bill has to be able to receive texts. Plenty of accounts were opened with a landline, a parent's number, a previous roommate's number, or a number that has since changed. The city's instruction is to update your contact information through the payment portal or by calling (801) 852-6000, or 3-1-1 within city limits.
This is a five-minute task that pays off during the exact event when you will not want to be looking up phone numbers. Do it on a normal afternoon.
The first ten minutes
Before you assume it is the utility, check whether it is you. Look at the breaker panel, and look outside — if the neighbors are dark, it is the grid; if only you are dark, it is likely yours.
Then, in rough order: check the outage map for scope, leave one light switched on so you notice the moment power returns, and switch off or unplug major appliances and electronics.
That last step is the one people skip. Restoration is not always a clean single event; it can come with fluctuations, and a house full of motors and compressors all restarting at the same instant is hard on both your equipment and the circuit. Provo's guidance is to follow manufacturer instructions for switching off major appliances, electronics, computers, and heating or air conditioning systems. The single light left on is what tells you when to start turning things back.
Food, and the number that is really about behavior
Provo's published guidance is that refrigerators and freezers will maintain food for 12 to 48 hours or longer, depending on room temperature and how often you open them.
The spread in that range is enormous, and most of it is under your control. A closed refrigerator is a well-insulated box slowly warming. An opened refrigerator dumps its cold air in seconds and starts over. The practical technique is to decide what you need before you touch the handle, take everything in one motion, and shut it.
A full freezer holds cold longer than an empty one, because frozen mass is itself a thermal reservoir. If an outage looks likely to run long and your freezer is half empty, filling the space with containers of water is a genuinely effective move.
Generators, and the rule that protects someone else
Provo's guidance on portable generators is unambiguous: do not connect or plug a generator into the wiring system of your home or building. Plug individual appliances directly into the generator.
The hazard has a name — backfeed. A generator wired into house circuits can push power backward through your service and out onto the local line. Crews restoring service work on the reasonable assumption that a de-energized line is de-energized. Backfeed makes that assumption fatal, and it can also energize the same line for your neighbors.
Two more generator rules that are not optional. Run it outdoors, well away from windows, doors and vents, because generator exhaust contains carbon monoxide and carbon monoxide kills people indoors every winter. And let it cool before refueling.
If you want a generator that can safely power circuits rather than extension cords, the equipment for that is a properly installed transfer switch, and installing one is licensed electrical work.
Heat, and the other carbon monoxide problem
Provo's guidance says never to use a gas oven or range to heat your home, and warns that alternate heat sources such as kerosene heaters or wood-burning devices produce deadly carbon monoxide if inadequately ventilated.
This is a cold-weather failure mode specifically, and Utah Valley's worst outage weather coincides exactly with the temperatures that make people desperate for heat. A gas range is designed to run for the minutes it takes to cook, in a kitchen with air movement — not for hours in a sealed house.
The safer approach in a cold outage is layers, a single room, closed doors, and blankets. A working carbon monoxide alarm with fresh batteries is cheap and belongs in every home here regardless of outage planning.
Solar panels do not do what people assume
A grid-tied solar array with no battery storage stops producing during an outage. This is intentional. Anti-islanding protection prevents your panels from energizing lines that utility workers have every reason to believe are dead.
So a sunny afternoon and a roof full of panels will not run your refrigerator unless you have storage. Provo's own guidance adds a practical follow-up: restart your system after utility power has been restored, and contact your solar provider if you do not know how to do that. People have gone weeks after an outage wondering why production looked wrong.
If outage resilience is the actual goal, the component to ask about is a battery.
Plan ahead if power is medical
If someone in the household depends on powered medical equipment — oxygen concentrators, CPAP, certain infusion or mobility devices — outage planning is not a comfort question.
Do the work in advance rather than during. Know the runtime of any battery backup, keep a manual alternative where one exists, and have a decision rule about when to relocate rather than wait it out. Talk to the equipment supplier about backup options and to your medical provider about what a several-hour interruption means for your specific device.
Trees are part of the power system
Provo Power's operations include line clearance arborists, which is a reminder that vegetation is a major cause of outages along the Wasatch Front. Wind, wet snow and heavy summer growth all put branches into conductors.
If you have trees near a service drop or distribution line, the safe move is to report it rather than address it. Trimming near energized conductors is specialist work with a genuine electrocution risk, and it is not a homeowner job at any level of confidence.
The department lists scheduled maintenance, vehicle accidents, wind, rain and snow, and mechanical failure among the ordinary causes of outages here — a list that is mostly weather and mostly seasonal.
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- Furniture Shopping in Utah Valley: The Student Cycle, the Delivery Trap & Where to Actually Look Setting up utilities in Provo covers accounts and what is actually on the city bill, and Provo weather explains the wind and snow patterns behind most of the outages described here. If your outage is part of a wider emergency, earthquake preparedness in Utah Valley covers the version of this problem that lasts longer than an evening.
The short answer
You probably do not need to call — Provo watches its own grid and dispatches without you. But call (801) 852-6888 right away if you heard a pop, saw damage, or know something the system cannot. Call 911 for a sparking line on the ground. Use 311 for anything about the bill.
Check the map for scope, leave one light on, shut down the big appliances, and keep the fridge closed. Never wire a generator into the house and never heat a house with the range.
Then, on some ordinary afternoon before any of this happens, call 311 and make sure the phone number on your utility bill can receive a text. In the fall, that number is how the city will tell you when the lights are coming back.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to call and report a power outage in Provo?
What number do I call for a power outage in Provo?
When should I call 911 instead of the power department?
Why is Provo's electricity different from Orem's?
How long will food last in the refrigerator during an outage?
Can I plug a generator into my house wiring?
Will my solar panels keep the lights on when the grid goes down?
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