Cause of Shelby's nighttime power outage identified
By David Jacobs
The cause of the more than three-hour power outage in Shelby late Friday night and into early Saturday has been pinpointed.
"The power outage was caused by a faulty lightning arrester (a device used to protect the electric distribution system from damaging effects of lightning)," Shelby municipal utilities director John Ensman reported Saturday.
"There were no storms in the area, the arrester just failed," he said via email, adding that if it's mechanical or electrical it will eventually fail.
The outage affected about 500 electric customers, some of whom did not have service restored for a total of more than five hours as crews worked to replace the part.
The city of Shelby's Division of Electric serves approximately 5,100 electric customers.
"Only one distribution circuit of 10 circuits that distributes power to the community was affected by the outage, mostly residential customers in the Seltzer Park area and northeast area of town, except for a few outlying farms east of town also lost power," Ensman specified.
The outage started around 10:30 p.m. Friday.
"Crews were called in," Ensman said. "Upon finding the issue, they isolated that particular area and were able to restore power around 1:40 a.m. [Saturday] to the rest of the customers on the circuit."
"An area around Carefree Estates was out of power for about two more hours until the faulty arrester was replaced," Ensman added in reference to the manufactured home community in northeast Shelby.