Bonneville Power Administration will be doing high-voltage maintenance work on the Fidalgo Substation. Power will be off for all of San Juan County from 11:59 a.m. on Thursday, May 8 until 7 a.m. on Friday, May 9.

BPA expects to turn the power back over to OPALCO by 6 a.m. OPALCO will then bring the system back online circuit by circuit to avoid high demand charges. All OPALCO members should have their power restored by 7 a.m. Updates will be posted online at www.opalco.com and on Twitter (@orcaspower).

OPALCO will also take advantage of this opportunity to do maintenance work on its transmission system as well.

Members are responsible for their own equipment. Members are encouraged to install surge protection to safeguard electronic, computer and other sensitive equipment and appliances.

To prepare for the outage, members may want to turn sensitive electronics and equipment off at the surge protector, or unplug them completely. It’s a good idea to keep a flashlight handy overnight. In the morning, turn electronics and appliances back on slowly, one at a time. For more information on how to prepare for an outage and what to do during an outage, go to www.opalco.com.