More than 5,100 customers living west of Western Avenue lost power at 2:46 p.m. Oct. 20 after Commonwealth Edison's feed to two Geneva substations dropped unexpectedly.

The outage ranged from 18 to 28 minutes after service was disrupted at the City's South Street and Keslinger Road substations. While the City of Geneva owns and operates its own electric utility, ComEd lines do run through portions of the community and to the substations.

Geneva's Public Works Department crews immediately responded to the issue and were able to bring customers back online by energizing the substations from alternate power feeds. Power was restored to the last 664 customers at 3:14 p.m.

As a reminder, residents who experience a power outage after-hours should report the incident to the Geneva Police Department non-emergency number at 630-232-4736. The front desk will then dispatch the on-call Public Works Electric Division personnel to respond to the problem. Depending on the size of the outage, people may not be able to get through to the Police Department on the first attempt due to heavy call volume. While we understand that may be frustrating, there is a good chance the reason for the busy signal is because neighbors are reporting the same outage to our staff.

The City's online "Report A Concern" online system and social media accounts are not monitored 24 hours a day. Reporting after-hours outages on these avenues are not the most effective tools to notify our staff of a power outage.