SmartHub is Sac Osage Electric Cooperative’s online account portal and smartphone app. Many members are familiar with it as a way to pay their electric bill or to track their daily usage and hourly demand. But signing up for SmartHub also gives the cooperative and members another way to communicate other issues.
Members can change SmartHub settings and manage notifications. They can receive notifications through email and text messages. These notifications can now include outage updates. In late February, the Cooperatives generation and transmission utility informed Sac Osage that rolling blackouts might happen in its service territory. Thankfully these blackouts did not occur, but the Cooperative had little time to inform members who would be impacted. Sac Osage used social media and its website to warn members of the possibility of a planned outage, but with SmartHub outage notifications turned on, the specific members affected could be notified more quickly by text and e-mail.
Planned rolling blackouts have not happened in Sac Osage territory, but other planned outages do occur. At times line sections will have to be temporarily disconnected to do service upgrades or to safely remove a hazard from the right-of-way. Through Smarthub members can receive some advanced warning that these outages are about to take place and how long they can be expected to last.
Members can receive all the benefits of SmartHub by clicking here, or downloading the SmartHub app through their phones’ app store. Members currently signed up should check their settings under “Manage Notifications” to confirm they are receiving messages through e-mail and/or text notifications.