Picture of a break box for illustrative purposes. (ID 296900944 © Eakrin Rasadonyindee | Dreamstime.com)

By Josh Hall | @Vancan19

equipment failure

Widespread power outage affects 4,000 customers in Red Deer Tuesday morning

Sep 3, 2024 | 2:23 PM

Around 4,000 customers were impacted by a power outage in Red Deer this morning.

Reports came in from Michener, the G.H. Dawe, Edgar, Queens, and power was even out for the first day of school at Oriole Park Elementary.

Dean Walker, senior utilities superintendent with the City’s Electric, Light and Power (EL&P) department, says the outage began at 9:10 and originated in the Edgar area.

By 10:45, all power was restored, with Edgar and Queens the last to get full restoration.

The exact cause remains under investigation, but Walker explains it was an equipment failure due to a fault on the system.

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He says the equipment is not old, but because of this malfunction is now in the process of being replaced .

“It’s very similar to your house, whereby we have four major substations around town and then 11 distribution substations for a total of 15,” he explains.

“Think of all of those as what’s inside a breaker box, with different feeders, going out to Edgar or to Kentwood, for example; in this instance, the fault caused some protection to operate back at the substation which caused an outage on more than one feeder. Those protections are for the safety of the public and staff as well as to safeguard the system from situations that will cause more damage and take more time and resources to fix — the same as a breaker in your house.”

Essentially, there was a high current which caused the protection to operate, though what caused the high current is what remains under investigation.

If you are experiencing an outage or see downed power lines and equipment in the city of Red Deer, call 403-342-8274. Do not approach damaged electrical equipment.

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