Outage disrupts power to thousands
Several thousand Penelec customers in the Bradford area lost power around 9 o’clock Monday morning, but were quickly restored to service.
According to Penelec spokesman Todd Meyers, approximately 3,000 customers were impacted, some longer than others. Most were back in action within about 10 minutes, while others had power restored in approximately half an hour.
“Restoring power was our top priority,” Meyers said. “We were able to accomplish this by temporarily reconfiguring our local network to feed customers from nearby power lines.”
Meyers said that Penelec crews had patrolled the line that connects the company’s substation in Lewis Run to its Bradford West substation to determine the cause of the outage and make any needed repairs.
Meyers said late Monday afternoon that, while crews covered the entire line through woods and over rugged terrain, no cause was located.
“Sometimes it turns out to be a branch or something that made contact and tripped out the circuit, but it has dropped to the ground by the time our crews come through to investigate,” Meyers observed.
Power was disrupted again just before 5 p.m., at least in downtown Bradford, but was restored only minutes after 5 o’clock. Weather moved through the area between 4 and 5 p.m., but it was unclear by press time Monday whether that factored into the second outage.