A faulty transformer in the Raft River electrical service area caused the emergency blackout of Wendover Wednesday explained Wells Rural Electric spokesman Garret Hylton.
“Wells Rural Electric Co. owners in Wendover were without power for about three hours on Wednesday as crews from Raft River Electric replaced a damaged insulator on their transmission line that feeds WREC’s system. The problem was identified Wednesday morning during a routine line patrol by Raft River Electric crews. By spending a few hours to promptly correct the issue, Raft River Electric ensured that WREC owners avoided a much longer, unplanned future outage.” Hylton wrote in a press release.
When notified of the Raft River action WREC sprang into action and notified Wendover businesses and residences of the coming black out two hours before the lights went out.
“We appreciated the heads up,” said High Desert Advocate publisher Howard Copelan. “Wednesday is our dead line day and we were able to plan around the black out.”
Power went out at 2 pm and was restored at 4:15 pm
Offering reliable electricity at cost is WREC’s most fundamental purpose. WREC’s operations department implements an aggressive maintenance program that includes routine line patrols, pole testing, tree trimming and equipment upgrades. Like a majority of past outages, Wednesday’s service interruption was the result of an issue outside of WREC’s system. In 2013, the average WREC owner was without power for less than two hours for problems that happened in WREC’s service territory. In the rare case you do experience an outage, please help us restore power as quickly as possible by calling our 24-hour Outage Dispatch Center at 1-800-566-6696..”
