Nearly 70 PSO Linemen Deploy to Louisiana for Storm Restoration
According to Oklahoma Energy Today, nearly 70 line and service workers for Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO) were sent to Shreveport, Louisiana this week to help restore power following severe weather that left thousands of customers without electricity.
The crews were dispatched to help sister company Southwestern Electric Power Company (SWEPCO), part of the same American Electric Power family of utilities. PSO’s Matt Rahn said about 30,000 customers were initially left without power, and that number had been reduced to 15,000 by Tuesday. By Wednesday, Southwestern anticipated that 95% of those who lost power would have it back on by the end of the day.
“They’re making some progress, but hopefully these guys can help things move a little quicker,” Rahn told News on 6 in Tulsa. “Crews help out other utilities often times when there’s a big storm because that puts a lot of strain on those resources, and we want customers to get their power back on safely.”
Many of the workers didn’t have much time to recover before the Louisiana deployment: they spent the previous weekend restoring power lost from Fourth of July storms that left PSO customers without power around Bartlesville, Oklahoma. “They’ve been working hard and have been putting in a lot of hours, but they’re ready to go help out our sister company down in Louisiana,” Rahn said. “It was a priority to help our customers first, and now that we have those extra resources to help out folks down in Shreveport, we’re going to send some crews down there.”
What It Means for Subcontractors
Mutual-aid deployments like this one are a recurring feature of the storm season calendar, and they carry direct scheduling implications for field service and subcontracting firms working utility territory. When a utility pulls line crews cross-state for storm restoration, local project schedules, planned maintenance windows, and overtime budgets back home absorb the strain until those crews return. Firms bidding utility work in AEP’s footprint, PSO, SWEPCO, and their other operating companies, should build storm-season contingency into project timelines rather than treating mutual-aid call-outs as a rare disruption.
