Equipment failure knocks out city power
Published 1:23 pm Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Drivers getting on and off Armory Drive earlier on Tuesday had to negotiate without traffic signals for awhile. A power outage also affected many city residents at their homes. A failed insulator at the Franklin substation was the cause, according to Daisy Pridgen, a spokeswoman for Dominion Power. — Stephen H. Cowles | Tidewater News
FRANKLIN—A large part of Franklin was without power for approximately 35 minutes on Tuesday morning because of equipment failure.
Mark Bly, director of Power and Light in Franklin, issued the following statement:
“At approximately 10:59 this morning Dominion Virginia Power had a piece of equipment fail at their Franklin Substation which feeds the City’s Station No. 1 which is directly adjacent. This station is located at the end of South Street on the western side of the Rte. 58 interchange. The areas that went dark include all of South Street, Pretlow Street, College Drive, Armory Drive to the west of College Drive and the southern end of High Street including City Hall. The Dominion service man was able to respond quickly and clear the problem and re-energize our station at 11:34 [a.m.]. Total number of customers effected is 2,766, which is nearly half of our entire system.”
In a separate response to the newspaper, Daisy Pridgen, a spokeswoman for Dominion Power, stated that “the outage was cause by a failed insulator at the Franklin Substation. All customers, including approximately 1,800 customers from Town of Franklin, were restored at 11:31 after a 33-minute outage.”
