5,000 Bryan customers lose power for 3 hours
2/20/2005BRYAN All 5,000 customers of the city s electric utility lost power for three hours yesterday when one of six generators malfunctioned, causing the other five to shut down, city officials said.
The power outage occurred about 3:30 p.m., about 11 hours into maintenance work being done by city crews on a 138,000-volt transmission line that regularly feeds power to the city from the American Electric Power utility.
The generators were being used as a temporary source of power to feed a spare line while the maintenance work was being done, Stephen Casebere, the city s director of utilities, said.
Service was restored at 6:30 p.m. when utility crews interrupted their maintenance work and reactivated the regular transmission line.
The transmission line maintenance was to be completed today, and no interruption in service was expected.
It was unclear last night what caused the generator to malfunction, Mr. Casebere said.