Midstate Electric finds cause of overnight outage

Midstate Electric Cooperative suffered an overnight outage of its entire 18,400-member system early Wednesday when its 230-kilovolt Bonneville Power Administration transmission line failed, officials said. Some lost power for up to six hours due to related issues.

The outage began around 2:15 a.m. and the lines were restored within two hours, though some still were out of power for hours longer due to overload issues, said Teresa Lackey, Midstate’s marketing and communications manager.

Working with BPA, the utility was able to tie into BPA’s emergency feed to bring the system back up, but it had to do so slowly, Lackey said.

The Fort Rock line was restored just before 3:30 a.m. and the one to Sunriver a few minutes later, she said. The La Pine-Sixth Street line was restored just before 4 a.m.

Lackey added that some overload issues, particularly in Sunriver, caused some fuses to blow, meaning some outages lasted much longer – until 8:15 a.m., for some.

She said late Wednesday they had determined the outage was caused by a broken power line cross-arm that was later repaired. BPA switched the power back to the regular line without having to cut power to the system, even momentarily.

Lackey offered “a big thank you to all of our members for your patience and understanding.”