AK - Outage blamed on faulty breaker By DIANA CAMPBELL Staff Writer

Golden Valley Electric Association officials say a faulty breaker was the source of the Monday night power outage that left some Interior residents without electricity for nearly two hours.

Electric company workers are still investigating the problem, GVEA officials say. The breaker is located south of Healy on the Anchorage-to-Healy intertie.

GVEA officials don't know what caused the breaker to trip itself. Internal reports showed no fluctuations in power, said Corinne Bradish, GVEA spokeswoman.

The outage occurred Monday night at 7:40 p.m., plunging most Golden Valley customers from Cantwell to Delta Junction into darkness.

Most customers were without power for an hour and eight minutes, Bradish said. The shortest time was 21 minutes and the longest was an hour and 46 minutes, she said.

Downtown and Airport Way residents who depend on the GVEA's Chena Substation for electricity did not lose power initially, Bradish said. However, when North Pole diesel generators were fired up to help restore electricity, power went out for a short period for those residents, Bradish said.

It is unusual for such a outage to occur, said Bradish.

http://63.147.65.1/S-ASP-Bin/ReformatSQLIndex.ASP?puid=1316&spuid=1316&Indx=578635&Article=ON&id=35334888&ro=4

-- Doris (nocents@bellsouth.net), December 13, 2000