Power Outage for Approximately 12,000 Members Due To Failed Lightening Arrester

Last evening (Tuesday) Appalachian Electric Cooperative experienced an electric outage effecting approximately 12,000 members. At approximately 8:00 p.m. last night, a piece of equipment (lightning arrester) failed at the 161,000V transmission line feeding AEC’s Oakland delivery point from TVA. This resulted in an outage to the distribution system. Without the TVA feed to Oakland, electric service was interrupted to AEC distribution substations at Oakland, Rutledge and Jefferson City, effecting members in those areas as well as portions of New Market,and Talbott. This resulted in approximately 12,000 AEC members being without power.

AEC operations personnel quickly dispatched line crews which began the process of switching feeds within its distribution system. By 9:45 p.m. all power had been restored to AEC members. Work to remove the failed equipment from service has been completed and the transmission / distribution grid is back to normal operations.