TAMPA, Fla. — Neighbors in the K-Bar Ranch communities are calling for quick action from TECO Energy after frequent, quick power outages that are impacting their homes.
Several neighbors from the Bassett Creek subdivisions of K-Bar Ranch sat down with ABC Action News about the outages that can happen multiple times in a week, with no severe weather.
"You'll have a day where it's bright and beautiful, nothing is going on, and you'll have an outage or two," said Brian Page.
Page, along with Pete Radigan have called TECO asking for explanations into the outages that happened at least two to three times in a week.
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"But, it makes me wonder, why is it a problem here?" asked Tom Pitman, who also lives in the subdivision.
A spokesperson for TECO Energy tells us these are momentary outages, that last a second or two, usually under a minute.
Cherie Jacobs tells ABC Action News that the K-Bar Ranch area is seeing momentary outages "more than normal," and they have identified the problems.
In the past weeks, TECO crews have replaced half a dozen pieces of equipment known as switch gears to help with the problems.
However, Jacobs said that there are a handful more that need to be replaced in the coming weeks, "we still have more to go and in the coming weeks we hope this reliability issue gets resolved."
Radigan and others have been asking for a fix since the end of May, and they feel like their requests for a fix are being delayed.
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The outages have caused several neighbors to lose appliances, and electronics -- many of them had surge protections on their home. Although they say they we're not told 100% that this was the cause, they all happened after the momentary outages.
"When you lose electronics inexplicably, you have to wonder if it is a surge that's causing it," said Page.
Jacobs said if a customer believes there was a loss of appliances as a result of their equipment, there is a claims process that can be filed.
Since TECO made repairs to several of the switch gears, Radigan said his street has not seen a momentary outage for the past two weeks.
However, neighbors in other subdivisions nearby are still experiencing frequent outages.
ABC Action News requested the number of momentary outages. However, there was not an exact number TECO could provide us.
Jacobs said customers could have nine to 10 momentary outages in a year, and it would be considered average.
