MEA: Cause of Thursday's outage unknown

Update: MEA says the previous statement identifying coal dust as the cause of yesterday’s outage was premature.  The complete updated statement follows:

 

 

 

“Yesterday at 10:20AM, we reported news from another source that the cause of the outage was coal dust causing problems with the contactors in Healy. This statement was posted prematurely, as once crews made this repair, the intertie opened back up showing that there remained another cause. After GVEA and MEA patrolled their sections of the intertie today, no cause was visibly evident to crews, therefor the official cause of this outage is still unknown at this time.”

On Thursday morning, more than 4,000 customers of Matanuska Electric Association were temporarily without power, according to the utility.

MEA says calls reporting the outage began coming in shortly after 6:30 Thursday morning. The outage stretched from Willow at the south end to the Mt. McKinley Princess Wilderness Lodge area to the north.

Once crews arrived on-site, MEA says they had to conduct a physical inspection of the power lines to see where the problem originated.