More than 10,000 Salt River Project (SRP) electric customers had their power turned off Wednesday after the utility’s phone system and phone app went down.

The outage affected SRP customers on the utility’s prepaid “M-Power” plan who didn’t have to make payments for several days due to the Valley’s excessive heat warning.

But when the warning ended and payment was due, SRP spokesperson Patty Likens said the rush to make payments first thing Wednesday morning jammed phone lines and prevented phone app and web payments.

"The app and the My Account came back very quickly, but the phone lines were giving us some trouble for about two to three hours,” Likens said. 

Likens said SRP does not have an exact count on how many prepaid customers are still without electricity. But the utility is reaching out to them to find ways to get their power restored.