After years of eye-rolling over flickering lights and marathon blackouts, Memphis’ power situation finally looks a bit less grim. Customers and city officials say outages are happening less often and getting fixed faster, even if the progress still depends a lot on which neighborhood you call home.
Numbers pulled together by local media underline how big the turnaround may be. In 2022, MLGW customers collectively racked up about 172 million minutes without power, and nearly 74,000 households lost electricity three or more times that year, according to Action News 5. That February’s ice storm alone knocked out service to more than 200,000 customers and helped push the utility to speed up repairs and upgrades.
Investments Since 2023
MLGW says that brutal winter served as a wake-up call that led to a wave of investment starting in 2023, including extensive tree work, equipment replacement, and new grid technology aimed at cutting weather- and tree-related failures. Coverage of the utility’s request for proposals on solar and battery storage and its FY24 spending shows these efforts are part of a broader reliability strategy. Tri-State Defender reports that MLGW officials have called 2024 one of the system’s most reliable recent years since that work began.
Uneven Progress Across Neighborhoods
The gains are not evenly spread across the map. Data and on-the-ground accounts indicate that older parts of the city still absorb more than their share of outages. MLGW has flagged neighborhoods such as Castalia Heights for upcoming overhaul projects while pointing to completed reliability work in Orange Mound. As Action News 5 notes, the utility says its grid modernization program is scheduled to run through 2029.
Tech Fixes: Private 5G and Automated Reroutes
A big slice of the improvement is coming from smarter controls layered onto the old wires and poles. MLGW has contracted for a private 5G network and other automation that can detect faults and reroute power automatically instead of waiting for crews to hunt down the problem in the field. In a news release announcing the vendor, the utility described the private 5G rollout as “a foundational aspect of MLGW’s Grid Modernization Initiative,” saying it will speed restorations and support future automation, according to MLGW.
Officials say the changes are already visible in the outage data. “Since 2023, we’ve cut outage minutes in half,” MLGW President and CEO Doug McGowen told WKNO’s “Behind the Headlines,” citing the figure as proof that the reliability push is starting to pay off. The remarks came during a broader discussion of grid upgrades and new local generation plans, as reported by WKNO.
Tree Trimming and the Basics Still Matter
Even with all the new tech, crews are still grinding through the unglamorous work that keeps lines from going dark. MLGW’s tree-trimming program reports that crews had cleared about 4,220 miles as of January 2026 and notes that roughly 40 percent of outages are caused by trees, a figure leaders use to defend the costly, multi-year clearance effort, according to MLGW.
Bottom Line and What to Watch
MLGW says the mix of basic field work and new automation is meant to keep most storms from turning into citywide power nightmares, but officials also stress that fixing a system of this size takes both time and money. The multi-year rate package that helped bankroll many of these projects wrapped up with a final increase in January 2026, and local reporters are still tracking how those higher bills translate into better service in different neighborhoods. See Memphis Utility Bills to Rise for more on the rate hike and its local fallout.
