Power restored for nearly 800 CEC members

(Update: Power restored)

Nearly 800 Central Electric Cooperative customers were without power for up to six hours Thursday morning in the Powell Butte and Prineville areas, officials said.

In a posting to the co-op’s outage center, CEC officials said the outage affected 785 members serviced by the Powell Butte substation.

By mid-morning, the co-op posted a tweet that said crews were on-site testing equipment at the substation and estimated it would take about two more hours to restore power.

The utility’s outage map showed nearly 800 members still affected after 11 a.m.

Around 11:30 a.m., CEC Director of Member and Public Relations Brent Ten Pas said the crew would begin energizing the substation shortly and begin bringing members back online, beginning with the Baldwin Industrial Park.

The power was fully restored shortly after noon.

” The crew believes it was a load-related issue, but are still investigating, ” Ten Pas said.

The power outage began around 6:15 a.m. and affected Apple’s Prineville offices but not their large data center, which is served by Pacific Power, nor Facebook’s nearby facilities, Ten Pas said.