An unplanned outage occurred affecting approximately 1745 customers in the Lefroy, Belle Ewart and Churchill areas. Crews were dispatched immediately to determine the cause.

The cause of the outage was animal contact. When crews tried to energize, one phase affecting some 600 customers did not hold. Further to this crews had to patrol all associated lines to ensure there were no safety issues before energizing again. This can can take some time to complete, especially during adverse weather conditions.

Since customers were off for a while, the load required to get customers back on was very large and required to be completed in stages. The load was also higher as a distribution station is currently out of service to increase long term reliability. This required strategizing multiple back-feed options.

All but 20 customers were energized by 8:15 pm and the balance requiring equipment repair were restored at approximately 9:15 pm