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Disaster recovery planning

MGE is committed to meeting customers’ energy needs on a typical day as well as during a storm, natural disaster or cyberattack. We review and update our disaster recovery strategies to help ensure safe and efficient business continuity during challenging times.

All hazards response
Whether it’s a natural disaster or a man-made disaster, MGE has plans in place to prevent and mitigate damage and ensure safety. Having a well-defined and practiced All Hazards Response Plan (AHRP) is critical to managing and responding appropriately to emergency situations. MGE’s AHRP encompasses everything from storm response to cyberattacks. Members of the Incident Command Structure conduct AHRP exercises every year to ensure we’re ready to respond to any situation.

Storm response
We address weather-related incidents within the AHRP. It serves as our guide or framework for rapid, effective response to emergencies caused by extreme weather events.

We most recently activated the AHRP in July 2023 after a powerful Friday night storm caused damage and power outages across Wisconsin. The storm impacted more than 18,000 customers in the MGE service territory. With the activation of the AHRP, MGE employees jumped into action on what should have been the start of their weekend, with many joining the restoration effort during the overnight hours. Working 16-hour shifts to get service restored to impacted customers as quickly and safely as possible, MGE crews were able to restore service to all impacted customers in a little more than 24 hours. While we hope these situations never occur, MGE is committed to providing a safe, secure and timely response no matter the situation.

Additionally, we informally activated the AHRP for planning-level events throughout the past year. These events included an extreme cold weather event and flood water event in our gas-only territory.

A planning-level response is activated to inform AHRP section chiefs of a potential threat and to take the necessary pre-event steps to prepare for the possibility of an escalated response. Impacted business units monitor the situations closely and take proactive measures to mitigate potential outages to customers. While formal activation of the AHRP may not be needed, MGE employees are prepared to act if necessary.

Mutual assistance
MGE is a member of the Midwest Mutual Assistance Group and the Wisconsin Mutual Assistance Group. The idea of a mutual assistance group is to provide a quick and easy way for utilities to get help from or to offer help to other utilities with overwhelming restoration needs after a severe storm or other incident. MGE has both provided assistance to other utilities as well as received assistance.

In early April 2023, nine MGE Electric Construction and Operations employees traveled to St. Paul, Minn., to help another utility restore service to customers impacted by a late-winter storm. About 215,000 customers had lost power in Minnesota and parts of western Wisconsin.

In February 2023, MGE sent nine Electric Construction and Operations employees and equipment to the Lake Geneva area to help with restoration efforts after a winter storm hit that part of southern Wisconsin. The storm had knocked out power to more than 50,000 customers.

 

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