WASHINGTON CITY – Two separate power outages over the last three days left Washington City without electricity for short periods of time. St. George News readers residing in Washington City have asked what caused the outages, feeling left in the dark about the matter. Washington City officials were able to shed some light on the subject when inquiries were made.
Tuesday morning
The most recent outage occurred early Tuesday morning between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. Washington City Manager Roger Carter said a metering transformer failed at the Staheli substation and knocked out electricity for city residents. He said the metering transformer was an aging piece of equipment, approximately 25 years old, and finally died.
While power was knocked out for Washington City residents, Hurricane City Power reported via Twitter that power fluctuations – lights flickering – were experienced in Hurricane around 5:30 a.m., and that it was connected to the substation failure.
Carter said power was rerouted through other substations, ultimately restoring power to the city soon after the outage occurred. The electrical load handled by the Staheli substation is relatively small, he said, so there should be no impact on overall electrical power as it remains shut off until a replacement metering transformer is found.
Increasing summer temperatures were not considered to play a factor in the metering transformer’s failure.
Sunday morning
The other power outage happened shortly after 2 a.m., Sunday. A Washington City Power representative told St. George News that a power line had gone down, causing it to ground. The incident reset the whole city like a giant circuit breaker.
Washington City Power reported that power was restored by about 4:30 a.m. Some residents have indicated power wasn’t restored to their homes until 5 a.m. or shortly thereafter.
Aside from the temporary loss of power, Carter said both incidents were completely unrelated.
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