Work through it in this order
- Are the neighbors dark too? If yes, it’s a normal outage — report it to the utility and skip the rest of this page.
- Check the main breaker in your panel. It’s the big one at the top. If it’s tripped, flip it fully off, then firmly on. Once.
- Check individual breakers. A tripped one usually sits between on and off rather than fully off.
- Check GFCI outlets — bathroom, kitchen, garage, exterior. Press reset. One GFCI can control several outlets you’d never associate with it.
- Still nothing, or only half the house works? Call the utility.
Stop if you see or smell any of this
A burning smell, scorch marks, a panel that’s warm to the touch, buzzing, or visible sparks means stop troubleshooting and call 911 or the fire department. Same for any downed wire on your property — assume it’s live, stay at least 35 feet away, and keep others back.
These are the situations where the cost of being wrong is a house fire or electrocution, and no amount of saved call-out fee is worth it.
The meter is the boundary
This is what determines who pays. The utility owns the line running to your house and the meter itself — faults there are their repair, free, at any hour. You own the weatherhead (where the line attaches to your house), the mast, the panel, and every circuit inside.
Helpfully, utilities will come out and determine which side the problem is on at no charge. If it’s theirs, they fix it. If it’s yours, they’ll tell you what to give the electrician — which makes the electrician’s diagnostic visit shorter and cheaper.
What’s dead tells you whose it is
Work from how much of the house is out, not from what the lights are doing.
Nothing anywhere, neighbours fine → utility. Their service drop, their connector, their fuse. Free, and they come at night.
Half the house dead, lights dimming and brightening, 240V appliances behaving oddly → a lost leg or an open neutral, and usually utility-side. Call them today, not next week: unstable voltage quietly kills electronics and is a fire risk. Unplug what you can in the meantime.
One circuit or one room → yours. Breaker or GFCI first, electrician second.
Power drops only when a specific appliance starts → yours, and it is that circuit. Electrician.
Meter itself cracked, scorched, buzzing, or pulled away from the wall → utility, plus 911 if there is smoke or a burning smell. Do not touch it, and do not let anyone else touch it.
The wires have been pulled off the side of the house, or the mast is bent → both of you, in a fixed order. The utility de-energises and disconnects, an electrician repairs the mast, weatherhead, conductors, and meter base, usually under permit, and the utility reconnects — in many territories only after an inspection sign-off. Call the electrician first and they cannot start.
Underground service, no overhead wires → ask. Ownership of a buried lateral varies genuinely by utility, and it is one of the few places where “check first” beats any rule of thumb.
Whole neighbourhood dark → nobody’s fault but the weather. Report it and stop reading.
You rent → the landlord, in writing, and let them dispatch. Electrical faults are their repair and their contractor choice.
When each one says it’s the other’s problem
The most common dead end here is the loop: the electrician says the fault is on the utility’s side, the utility says it is on yours, and you are paying for one of those opinions. Break it by taking the free one first.
Get the utility out before you book anyone. When their technician is there, ask for three things, and ask for them on the ticket:
- Which side of the meter is the fault on?
- Have you de-energised or pulled the meter, and is it safe for an electrician to work?
- What has to be done, and inspected, before you will reconnect?
That ticket is what turns a two-hour electrician diagnostic into a twenty-minute quote. It is also the thing that stops the second contractor from telling you a different story than the first.
One check before any of this: look at your account. A remote disconnect for non-payment presents from inside the house exactly like a service fault, and no electrician can fix it.
Nobody legitimate knocks on your door after a storm
Outages generate door-knockers, and the pitch is usually a panel replacement or a “free electrical safety inspection”. Two things worth holding onto: an outage is not by itself evidence that your panel needs replacing, and service and panel work is permitted and inspected in nearly every jurisdiction.
So before any deposit: get the specific fault named in writing, get an itemised quote rather than a lump sum, confirm a permit is being pulled, and check the licence number against your state board. A contractor who tells you no permit is needed for panel or service work is telling you they cannot pull one.
For scale, HomeAdvisor puts an electrician’s first-hour service call at $100 to $200 and a typical electrical repair at $163 to $538. A four-figure number attached to a same-day outage should come with a named failed component and a permit, or it should come with a second quote.
The one that catches people out
If your power flickers, dims, or lights brighten oddly across the house, don’t wait it out. Unstable voltage — often a loose neutral connection — damages appliances and electronics quietly and can be a fire risk. That’s a call to the utility today, not a “watch it for a week” situation.