Skip to content

Update: GSU says equipment failure to blame for widespread outage

17K hydro customers in Downtown, Minnow Lake and New Sudbury lost power for about an hour this afternoon
150817_CR_power_out
Over 17,000 Greater Sudbury Utilities customers lost power for about an hour beginning at approximately 1:05 p.m. (Callam Rodya/Sudbury.com)

An equipment failure is the likely culprit of a widespread power outage in Greater Sudbury this afternoon.

Over 17,000 Greater Sudbury Utilities customers lost power for about an hour beginning at approximately 1:05 p.m. The Downtown core, Minnow Lake, Second Avenue, areas east of Barrydowne Road and part of Lasalle Boulevard were affected.

In a release, GSU said that power was restored by “rerouting through alternate paths.”

“Instances like this point to the importance of having redundancy built into the grid,” said GSU spokesperson Wendy Watson. “We were able to restore within an hour because of that network.”

Crews are still working on the suspect equipment, the company said.

Earlier in the day, the downtown core had a brief, two-minute outage caused by an equipment trip, which was re-set remotely, and 1685 customers in the Minnow Lake area experienced a 45-minute outage when a fuse blew.

Meanwhile, without power in the Sudbury.com newsroom, our video team amused themselves (and hopefully some readers) with an impromptu Facebook Live show.

Watch it here:


 


Comments

Verified reader

If you would like to apply to become a verified commenter, please fill out this form.




About the Author: Patrick Demers

Read more