Pacific Power serves Harrisburg homes and businesses. A 2017 substation fault left more than 5,000 customers in Junction City and Harrisburg without power, and a 2021 outage cut electricity to 1,443 Pacific Power customers in Harrisburg, NBC16 reported.
Two ways to keep the house running
A generator hookup puts a plug-in box on the outside of the house and a transfer switch or interlock at the panel. The interlock is a plate that lets the generator breaker on only when the main breaker is off. With it, a portable generator can safely run the circuits you pick: the fridge, the furnace fan, some lights, and outlets. A standby generator is installed permanently and starts by itself. We'll look at what you want to keep running and price both.
Older panels and older homes
Half of Harrisburg's 1,302 homes were built before 1980 and a quarter before 1970, according to the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. An older panel may have no space left, or no way to add an interlock. When that's the case, a panel upgrade comes first.
Shops, chargers, and heat pumps
A shop gets its own small panel fed from the house; see shop, garage, and barn wiring, and dedicated circuits for a welder or compressor. A heat pump needs a large circuit and a shutoff switch outside by the unit, and your HVAC contractor sets the heat pump itself; see heat pump circuits. For a car charger, see EV charger installation. Pacific Power customers in Oregon get home efficiency incentives through Energy Trust of Oregon, covered in the Pacific Power guide.
Picking the circuits for an outage
A portable generator can only carry so much at once, so the useful question is what you need running during an outage. For most houses that list starts with the fridge and freezer, the furnace fan, a few lights, and an outlet for phones, and on a well, the pump. Bring us that list and the generator's rated watts, and we'll show you what it can run together.
Harrisburg's own building department
Since July 1, 2021, the City of Harrisburg has run its own building permit program, including electrical permits, through Oregon ePermitting.