Heat and storms — two enemies of the power grid — converged over the July 4 weekend to knock out electricity for many around Northeast Ohio.
The outages hit city-owned Cleveland Public Power, which largely serves Cleveland, and private utility FirstEnergy, which serves portions of Cleveland and much of the broader region. These were just the latest electrical failures that have frustrated residents.
CPP Commissioner Ammon Danielson put it this way at a Ward 9 meeting after outages this spring:
“The No. 1 question is generally, ‘Why the heck is the power out?’” he said at the meeting, which was covered by Cleveland Documenters. “The No. 2 question is, ‘Why is it out again?’”
Readers — from Maple Heights to Parma and Detroit-Shoreway to Central — have asked the same thing. They have experienced multiple outages during the recent heatwave and storms. They have struggled to get answers from the utility companies about when power would be restored. They want to know what is being done to ensure long-term reliability and service.
So, to get Amped Up started, we are taking on a few of the frequent questions we have received and seen people venting about on social media, with the goal of chasing more answers over time.
Why did the power go out?
According to City Hall, this month’s sweltering temperatures drove up electricity usage and put CPP’s system under stress. Then the storm hit.
“Between the heat, the number of air conditioners, cooling devices that were being run, then you had the storm roll in, you had to one-two punch,” Cleveland City Council Utilities Committee Chair Brian Kazy said, “which made it difficult for our men and women who are tasked with keeping the lights on.”
CPP’s Western substation suffered underground line failures, Kazy said. And underground equipment is at greater risk of overheating because it doesn’t cool as easily as overhead wires, according to Marie Zickefoose, a city spokesperson. It can also take longer to find and fix underground equipment failures.
What are utilities doing to improve the grid’s reliability?
A leaked consultant’s report from 2019 put the state of CPP’s infrastructure in stark terms. The system was “unacceptable, unsafe and an outlier compared to other similarly sized utilities,” the report said.
Cleveland is preparing a transformation plan to modernize CPP’s infrastructure, Mayor Justin Bibb said in April. City Hall hasn’t yet released the plan.
But one thing city officials have divulged is that updating CPP will be expensive. Kazy said he expects an overhaul could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
During February budget hearings, Utilities Director Martin Keane told City Council that a facilities assessment priced an upgrade at “north of $250 million.” And those were “necessary upgrades,” not “state-of-the-art” ones, he said. On average, CPP spends $7 million on capital improvements each year, council was told.
At a council meeting in April, Kazy said the city had helped stabilize CPP’s finances, but signaled that more work has to be done.
“When you’re dealing with so much neglect over years, we’re not just going to be able to, pardon the pun, turn the lights on and fix the problem,” he said. “It’s going to take a strategic investment in Cleveland Public Power.”
A different improvement project is in the works this year. CPP is updating what’s known as the SCADA system, officials told City Council in February. Short for supervisory control and data acquisition, the system helps CPP’s substations communicate with the control center, Keane told council members.
While the SCADA upgrades may not stop power outages, they’ll help CPP find and fix them more quickly, Keane said.
What about FirstEnergy upgrades?
One example of FirstEnergy’s infrastructure work comes from Lakewood, a city that has been giving the company plenty of heat over outages in recent years.
In the summer of 2025, Lakewood Mayor Meghan George and Cleveland City Council Members Charles Slife and Brian Kazy complained to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio about FirstEnergy’s outages. The PUCO found the utility to be in probable non-compliance.
FirstEnergy said it would “expand and expedite” its plans to upgrade Lakewood infrastructure. The utility said it would replace two transformers and make other investments in Lakewood. The PUCO told the company to replace one of the transformers by the end of 2026 and the other by mid-2027.
The first of those new $1.85 million transformers arrived in June of this year. It is expected to be up and running by September, News 5 Cleveland reported. A second transformer is coming later this summer, according to FirstEnergy.
That was too late for July’s outages, which prompted George to turn up the temperature on the company. In response, FirstEnergy provided Lakewood with a mobile generator, the city said. George told Ideastream Public Media on Wednesday that she sent a new complaint to the PUCO this week.
Who oversees utility companies in Ohio?
The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) regulates electric, natural gas, telephone and water utilities.
Does the PUCO have authority over Cleveland Public Power and FirstEnergy?
It does not have authority over Cleveland Public Power because the PUCO does not regulate municipal-owned utilities. The PUCO does have authority over FirsEnergy companies that include the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company, Ohio Edison and Toledo Edison.
How can customers of FirstEnergy companies report issues and concerns about their power outages to the PUCO?
Contact the PUCO consumer call center at (800)-686-7826 or online here. You can also file a complaint here.
How does the PUCO track and follow up on concerns about frequent power outages?
The PUCO told Signal Cleveland in an email that its staff reviews customer- and utility-reported outages and service quality interruptions on a regular basis, checking for issues that occur on multiple occasions or in the same area. The PUCO can also review outages from the past 24 months to see patterns in reliability. Additionally, utilities file publicly available annual reports with the PUCO which detail outage causes on a system-wide basis
What can the PUCO do to force utilities to improve their reliability?
Electric utilities are required to meet reliability standards, which are unique to each company and service territory. The standards measure the average number of outages per customer annually and the average length of time it takes to restore power to customers. Utilities that miss their standards are required to provide an action plan to the PUCO to address reliability. Missing a standard for two years may lead to additional corrective action.
Here are the standards and performance reports from the past several years for these companies: Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company, Ohio Edison, Toledo Edison.
Does the PUCO ever get tough with the utilities?
Recently the PUCO denied the application to establish new, more lenient reliability standards for the FirstEnergy companies, noting the significant amount of public outreach we received on this issue. Read more from PUCO here.
Where can I find PUCO investigations of CEI?
Here are letters from PUCO’s 2025 investigation of CEI’s outages in Lakewood.
How can I report and check on power outages in Cleveland when my supplier is Cleveland Public Power?
By phone at (216) 664-3156 or online here.
Where can I view maps of CPP and FirstEnergy power outages?
See CPP’s outage map here and FirstEnergy’s outage map here:
How do I report and check on power outages in Cleveland when my supplier is Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company, a FirstEnergy company?
1-888-544-4877
What questions do you have about power outages? Tell us below:
Collecting questions about recent power outages in Greater Cleveland.
