Power outage impacts Southeast Utah overnight

A power outage on March 18 impacted about 10,000 customers from Green River to the Navajo Nation.

Power was lost around 6:20 pm on Tuesday evening, impacting Utahns from Green River down to the Navajo Nation as well as some northern Arizona residents.

Rocky Mountain Power spokesperson Dave Eskelsen say they don’t know what exactly caused the transmission disturbance that is under investigation. But they did share that a damaged structure was located about 30 miles south of Blanding. The section of line affected goes from Pinto substation just east of Monticello and connects all the way to 4 Corners substation right between Shiprock and Farmington, New Mexico.

While they’re still investigating the cause Eskelsen said they are pretty sure an electrical fault on the insulation system caused some sparking and fire damage to the wooden structure.

The fault automatically triggered the system to shut down to avoid further damage. Crews went to work and were able to reroute power at 3:00 am. Crews also isolated the damaged portion and are delicately traversing rugged terrain to get crews and equipment in to restore the damaged area which they hoped to complete at some point on Wednesday, March 19.

The outage not only impacted Rocky Mountain Power customers in Grand, Emery and San Juan Counties but also Empire Electric customers in Monticello and Eastland as well as Navajo Tribal Utility Authority Customers in Aneth, Red Mesa, White Mesa, Mexican Water, and Montezuma Creek.

With an outage around 6:00 pm, Empire Electric Customers in the Monticello and Eastland areas had power re-routed from the Pinto substation and saw power return about 9:40 pm last night.

Josh Dillinger, Empire Electric General Manager, explained that Monticello and Eastland areas can be serviced by either the Pinto and Cahone substations.

With maintenance work being done on the Cahone lines Monticello was impacted by the outage, Dillinger explained that while they had to recalibrate the substation to receive power through Cahone they were able to have power return much sooner than other towns in the area.
Dillinger explains they work to have two options for each town serviced by Empire Electric.

Rocky Mountain Power also has alternative paths for power with crews up all night assessing the situation and restoring power.

“When we have something like that happen, particularly on major transmission system we get out right of way. Crew assessed damage pretty quickly last night. While we’re working on permanent repair, other group of engineers look at situation and things to supply our customers through other paths of delivery.”

Rocky Mountain linesman worked overnight with power for most customers restored around 3:00 am.

A second problem developed in service to the Moab area; they were out until about 7:49 Tuesday morning. Some customers in the Spanish Valley area, restored as of 8 o'clock in the morning.