The City of Chetopa is asking residents to reduce electric usage during the peak heat of the day. Peak time is from 11:00am to 7:00pm.

The City says they want to be transparent and upfront with residents to explain the situation with their power grid. At the end of April, when Liberty Utilities shut off power and went to energize the system to turn the power back on, some problems came up. One of the control panels that runs the reclosure it was connected to would not work. They sent that panel off for repair. Chetopa was told it could be repaired but there was no guarantee. They were recommended an upgraded panel, which they purchased.

During the first week of June, they lost another control panel, which caused a power outage in part of town. They reached out to other cities that are in KMEA and one city gave them a reclosure and control panel at no charge. That was picked up today. They also have the new panel that arrived. Those will be installed soon and along with an additional new one that will be here in the coming weeks. They are currently running the entire town on two reclosures instead of four. The power outage this past Sunday caused some more damage to their grid. The City is doing everything they can to resolve the issues and upgrade their substation as quickly as possible. In the meantime, they are asking residents to help out by conserving electricity during those peak times.