Thousands lose power in Western Kenosha County

Saturday outage affected about 13,000

By Jason Arndt
Editor

More than 13,000 We Energies customers in Western Kenosha County experienced a power outage on May 27, when an American Transmission Company substation lost electricity, because of external factors.

“ATC and We Energies representatives have determined that the outage was not due to an equipment failure but was likely caused by external, environmental factors,” said Alissa Braatz of ATC Corporate Communications.

The Spring Valley substation in the Village of Salem Lakes was the source of the power outage.

The outage reportedly started at 8 a.m. when about 2,000 customers had a momentary loss of power, according to WE Energies spokesperson Brian Manthey, who noted more outages followed.

“About 2,000 customers only saw momentary loss, so their power was only gone for just a few seconds,” Manthey said. “We had a total of about 11,500 that experienced a more sustained outage.”

The sustained outage lasted between 90 minutes to 2 1/2 hours, Manthey said, indicating crews spent time rerouting power sources to restore service to customers.

Through a series of steps, ATC crews and officials from WE Energies worked to transfer power from other substations, and in turn, connected lines to the Spring Valley substation in the Village of Salem Lakes.

“There were some people that were restored before others,” Manthey said. “We had about 3,000 customers that got power back in a little less than 90 minutes.”

However, for another 7,500 customers, they waited for nearly two hours to receive service.

The other 1,500 residents had power restored in 2 1/2 hours.

Power was restored by 10:30 a.m., according to Braatz.

“The transmission line and substation were placed back into service on May 27 at 10:30 a.m.,” Braatz states in an email.


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