Peterboro, NY – A power outage that cut electricity to about 14,100 National Grid customers Thursday in Madison and Onondaga counties was caused by an equipment failure at a substation in Peterboro, utility officials said. The outage began about 9:44 p.m. with the failure of a lightning arrester, a piece of equipment that protects the substation against lightning strikes, said...
Peterboro, NY – A power outage that cut electricity to about 14,100 National Grid customers Thursday in Madison and Onondaga counties was caused by an equipment failure at a substation in Peterboro, utility officials said.
The outage began about 9:44 p.m. with the failure of a lightning arrester, a piece of equipment that protects the substation against lightning strikes, said Alberto Bianchetti, speaking for the utility. The failure allowed an arc that shorted out a transmission line, he said.
That shut down power to customers in parts of Cicero, DeWitt and East Syracuse in Onondaga County and in Oneida, Lenox, Bridgeport and Canastota in Madison County, said Patrick Stella, another Grid spokesman.
It took about 45 minutes to complete the restoration of power. All customers were back on line by 11:01 p.m., Bianchetti said.
The arrester was not hit by lightning. “It just happened to fail,” Bianchetti said.