Power outage hits citizens

More than 1,000 members of Federated Rural Electric, Jackson, lost power for an hour or more Thursday after three insulators failed at a substation.

The outage occurred at 4:37 p.m., first affecting West Lakefield, Miloma, Minneota and Round Lake substations, and an hour later, Minneota, Round Lake, Middletown, Enterprise, Wisconsin, Ceylon, Dunnell, Wilbert and East Chain substations.

More than 2,800 members were affected by the transmission link blinks around 5:37 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. for three minutes.

“Federated had three crews out helping the Great River Energy crew pinpoint the problem and restore power as quickly as possible,” said Rick Burud, Federated’s general manager.

The outage was caused by insulator failures at a substation owned by Ewington Wind near Spafford Corner, which is connected to the 69 KV transmission line, which tripped off power to Federated’s nine substations. Power was restored to most of them within minutes, by re-routing power with Great River Energy’s automatic switch.

West Lakefield’s power was restored at 6:04 p.m. Line crews tried to reroute directly to the Miloma substation by opening a switch at 6:30 p.m., which blinked power for a few minutes to the nine substations. The second problem and transmission blink was caused by a failed circuit switcher at ITC Transmission’s Heron Lake substation. Power was restored to the Miloma substation around 6:43 p.m.