Wednesday evening from 5:50 p.m. to 7:04 p.m., 900 El Paso Electric customers in the Montana, Zaragoza and Rich Beem area lost power. EPE officials said a switch on a pole caught fire.

EPE leaders met with KFOX14 Wednesday afternoon to explain why more than a 1,000 people have had to deal with power outages in the past few weeks.

Henry Quintana, manager of public relations for El Paso Electric, said the company can't control drunken drivers crashing into their poles, and there's a certain type of metal balloon, called a Mylar balloon, that causes shorts in the electricity when it comes in contact with electrical lines.

Quintana said the reason El Paso residents have experienced so many small power outages in the past few weeks is that many of the transformers were not built to handle new appliances like large-screen television and refrigerated air conditioners. Once people add these appliances to their homes, the load becomes too heavy for the transformers and they blow out. The electric company has about 75,000 transformers in El Paso and they serve about 375,000 customers.

Because of the extreme heat lately, people are using their air conditioners all day, especially on the weekends. This usage also adds to the load.

"How we prepare ourselves is we make sure we have an inventory of transformers,” Quintana said. “We have our crews positioned in different parts of the city, and it usually takes about 45 minutes to an hour to get a transformer repaired."

A lot of our viewers sent us specific questions for the electric company through Facebook. KFOX14 asked Quintana those questions during an interview on Wednesday:

Question: What is EPEC doing to prevent power outages?

Answer: "There's only so much we can do to prevent them. We do have an aggressive maintenance program."

Question: If the power goes out for a few hours, does the customer get discounted for those hours?

Answer: While the power is out, the meter isn't running. No electricity is being metered when there's a power outage because your meter stops."

Question: Since the electric company had problems in during February’s freeze and it's having problem during the extreme heat, is there a temperature they can function at?

Answer: In the winter our power plants weren't functioning well. They weren't producing the electricity. Now they are producing it. Now it's a mechanical problem with our transformers."

Question: Does the company reimburse customers for damages like loss of food?

Answer: Food in a refrigerator lasts a long time if you don't open your refrigerator. There aren't many claims we have when there are outages."

Although Quintana said if people do have legitimate claims, the company be happy to pay for damages.