Substation Outage in Medical District

Substation Outage in Medical District
Power restored to all affected customers at 3:23 a.m.

(June 25, 2010)—At 10:10 p.m. Thursday, an animal (either a cat or raccoon) caused an outage at Substation 21, located on Jefferson, and short-circuited a switch. This damage led to an outage affecting three overhead distribution circuits and 12 network circuits.

The overhead distribution circuits, which included Methodist Hospital and about 300 other customers, were restored at approximately midnight. This was accomplished by re-routing power from other substations in the area.

At the same time, substation maintenance crews were making additional repairs to isolate the damaged switch in order to restore the 12 network circuits at Substation 21. The system is designed for the network circuits to operate simultaneously.

This additional work caused the delay in restoring power to other customers, including Le Bonheur and The Commercial Appeal, who were affected by the initial outage. Power was restored to all affected customers at 3:23 a.m. today.