Approximately 2,100 FortisAlberta customers in the Athabasca area lost power Feb. 6 as the company's power line technicians worked to repair an equipment malfunction at a substation in Colinton.
Approximately 2,100 FortisAlberta customers in the Athabasca area lost power Feb. 6 as the company's power line technicians worked to repair an equipment malfunction at a substation in Colinton.
The outage affected customers residing in the Town of Athabasca, Athabasca County, Whispering Hills, Island Lake, Sunset Beach, South Baptiste, West Baptiste, Calling Lake and Bigstone Cree Nation.
Alana Antonelli – communications manager at FortisAlberta – said the outage was caused by a malfunctioning switch at the substation which required repair.
“Some customers would have been off as early as 5:15 p.m.,” she said in an email statement.
Antonelli added the malfunction was likely caused by a combination of frost, cold weather and extreme changes in temperatures over the winter season.
“We do our best to prevent these things from happening through regular maintenance but sometimes an emergency repair is needed,” she said.
Antonelli said Fortis technicians and control centre operators were able to re-route power from another source, restoring power to 1,199 customers by 6:55 p.m. and the remaining 972 customers by 6:58 p.m.
“We thank customers for their patience and we encourage people to download our outage app to report and outage or see outage details including expected time of restoration,” Antonelli said.
The Fortis Alberta app is available for free on iTunes or Google Play store. Customers can also call 780-310-WIRE (9473) for service updates or follow FortisAlberta on twitter at @FortisAlberta
