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Vandals hit substation, cause brief power outage |
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Thursday, 08 July 2010 |
Because of vandalism at Entergy Arkansas’ Benton South Substation and the city of Benton substation on Tuesday, a brief controlled power outage occurred in a large section of Benton late Wednesday afternoon.
Jim Garland, customer service manager for Entergy, said a temporary repair process necessitated the short outage that took place around 5 p.m.
The area affected by the outage was “everything from about city Hall south,” according to Terry McKinney, general manager of Benton Utilities.
When Garland notified the Courier of Wednesday’s planned electrical outage, he said the problem would require permanent repairs today. For that project, an outage for Benton’s south feed is scheduled late today, but residential customers will not experience an outage, Garland said.
“No residents will experience an outage tonight because the city will have time to move loads around to compensate,” McKinney said.
Garland said the project will take place from
midnight to 6 a.m., “but it will be kind of a non- event. The purpose of the outage is to replace the stolen copper grounding that was taken from the substation.
“But because we can do some field switching, the local customers should not see an outage tonight,” Garland said. “Entergy crews are coordinating with the city of Benton on this.”
McKinney said the announcement of the outage on Wednesday did not occur in time for the city to switch feeds over and prevent any loss of power for area residents.
The copper grounding system reportedly is in place for the protection of the transformers and breakers, McKinney said.
“With the possibility of storms, Entergy does not want to take a chance of being hit by lightning, thus causing major damage to the substation,” he added.
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