Traffic going in all directions at Grand Avenue and 4th Street treat the intersection as a four-way stop as traffic lights are inoperable after a power outage hit the area about 1:35 p.m. Tuesday. Rocky Mountain Power reports nearly 9,800 customers are without power with an estimated time for repairs of 9:30 p.m.
Traffic going in all directions at Grand Avenue and 4th Street treat the intersection as a four-way stop as traffic lights are inoperable after a power outage hit the area about 1:35 p.m. Tuesday. Rocky Mountain Power reports nearly 9,800 customers are without power with an estimated time for repairs of 9:30 p.m.
Nearly 9,800 Rocky Mountain Power customers were in the dark for hours after a failure at a Laramie substation cut electricity a little after 1:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Although Rocky Mountain Power had estimated some people may have to wait until about 1 a.m. to have their power restored, repair work progressed to the point where power began to be systematically restored just after 5 p.m., according to a spokesperson for PacifiCorp, RMP’s parent company.
What caused the outage or why weren’t being reported as of press time Tuesday evening, but the problem had been tracked to a substation in the north part of Laramie, said David Eskelsen, a spokesperson for PacifiCorps based in Utah.
“Our substation crew is working to isolate a problem in the substation, then re-energize the substation,” he said in an email to the Boomerang. “Our substation engineer in Laramie is working on it.”
“If the problem is something that’s physically damaged and needs a lot of repair, the outage could be longer,” he said, adding that estimates are “a calculation based on the size of the outage and past experience.”
The outage also affected the Albany County Courthouse where people were going vote early for next week’s primary election. But operations were able to continue smoothly because the building is backed up by a generator and voting machines have battery back-up systems, said election worker Stacey Harvey.
Tuesday’s event comes less than two months removed from another outage that affected some of the same areas of the city.
About 2,500 people were without power in the core downtown area June 14 when a construction crew damaged a communications line while doing repairs along North 3rd Street.
That outage happened about 7:15 a.m. and prompted some downtown businesses to delay opening or close for the day. Even as customers were brought back online with power, some still experienced rolling blackouts as permanent repairs were made. That outage lasted into the evening for many customers.
Eskelsen said power had to be restored in a way that brings small sections online at a time.
“Once they isolate the problem, they need to restore customers in smaller groups so they don’t trip protection devices during restoration,” he said in the email.
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