A transmission line fault was the source of the widespread power outage that struck Estevan and other southeast Saskatchewan communities on Friday.
The power failure struck just after 11:30 a.m. Friday, and knocked out electricity to about 8,000 customers. Most of the affected customers were within Estevan city limits, but those in Alameda, Lampman, Bienfait, Steelman, North Portal and Roche Percee. Areas north and south of Estevan were also affected.
Many of the residences within city limits had power restored about two hours after the outage occurred, but there were those within Estevan and in the surrounding areas that didn鈥檛 have electricity back until almost 2:30 p.m.
鈥淎 transmission line had a fault on it, and that affected the Estevan east substation,鈥� said Scott McGregor, a media relations consultant with SaskPower.
The Estevan east substation supplies power to most of the city. McGregor said there is an Estevan west substation that would service a small portion of south Estevan.
鈥淎fter the outage was detected, we did send crews out to patrol the lines, just to try to find out where the fault occurred,鈥� McGregor said.
Since it was a transmission line that had the fault, and it feeds the substations, the only way to get power back on is through switching, by diverting power from other sub-stations, such as the Estevan west substation.
鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot of switching that goes on to get the power flowing back into the customers that were affected, so that we can continue working on the fault without the fault having been repaired.鈥�
The further away you move from the substation that was affected, the longer it will take to reroute power, he said.
It was the third power outage in Estevan during the past week, but McGregor said the three aren鈥檛 connected, and there wasn鈥檛 a root cause.
McGregor also paid tribute to the SaskPower employees who worked to get the power back on, and he thanked everyone for their patience.聽
