For years, residents of Oklahoma City's Talavera neighborhood have lived with an unwelcome houseguest: unpredictable power surges running through their homes. When they turned to their utility for help, they were told to buy surge protectors. Those devices, residents say, still didn't work.
The ongoing issue was detailed by KFOR, which reports that Talavera residents have been experiencing power surges for years. After reaching out to OG&E, they were told to get surge protectors for their homes, but the station notes those devices still didn't work. News 4's Marj Tobin is now digging into why the surges are happening in the first place, though the underlying cause has not yet been determined.
A Pattern Beyond Talavera
Talavera isn't the only Oklahoma community that has wrestled with OG&E-linked electrical damage. In El Reno, resident Armando Macias said an OG&E contractor working at a neighboring home accidentally cut his wire, telling the station, “they actually cut mine.” He said the line was cut back in December, and the resulting surge left appliances, televisions, sound systems, a computer, a washer and dryer, and even the doorbell unusable, according to the same outlet's report.
Macias said he spent four months trying to get in touch with OG&E about the damage before getting a response. The company told KFOR it had spoken with the customer and was investigating the cause of the damage while working toward a resolution.
Storm Damage Raised Similar Questions
A separate incident unfolded after severe weather hit the 3900 block of Northwest 14th Street, where power was out for four days following storms on May 31, per KFOR's reporting. Resident Jack Hollingsworth said the trouble didn't end when the lights came back on — he reported as much as $10,000 in appliance damage and said 250 volts had run through wiring rated for 110 volts. At least six houses on the street were affected, the station's report found.
In that case, OG&E said its investigation turned up no wrongdoing by the company and that it would be denying the residents' claims. OG&E spokeswoman Kathleen O'Shea advised residents to turn off appliances during severe storms when possible, telling the station, “sometimes it helps to turn off the appliances if you can.”
How Outage Complaints Get Handled
Oklahomans with disputes involving regulated utilities do have a formal avenue for complaints. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission's Consumer Services Group serves as the Commission's liaison to the public on utility regulatory issues, investigating and mediating complaints involving regulated public utilities and conducting field safety enforcement tied to some service-quality problems.
A 2024 Commission scorecard found that customers served by a regulated electric utility experienced an average of 1.174 outages per year over the prior five years, according to a filing posted by digitalprairie.ok.gov. That figure offers a statewide backdrop, though it doesn't speak directly to what Talavera residents have described.
For now, the cause behind Talavera's recurring surges remains unresolved, and Tobin's reporting is aimed at getting residents answers. Viewers can catch more of her coverage on The Breakdown, a program described as reimagining how news is delivered to the Oklahoma City market, which airs Monday through Friday at 6:30 p.m.
