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It's rare to experience two power outages within two weeks, but that's exactly what recently in Holyoke. Caused by a period of high demand secondary to extremely cold weather, Holyoke Gas and Electric issued the following statement:
"Outage Update: Power was restored to all customers this morning at 10:23 am, our team appreciates your patience and understanding throughout this unexpected event. We want to take a moment to distinguish this event from an outage that took place on January 8.
Last night’s outage was caused by an electric switch failure within a manhole near the corner of Cabot Street and Beech Street; it impacted approximately 215 customers. A few weeks ago, on Saturday, January 8, there was an underground cable fault in a manhole on Suffolk Street that impacted electric service to 440 customers. While both incidents were caused by components within the electric system, the two situations were very different and unrelated - one was caused by a switch and the other by a wire. The only similarity is that both failures occurred during periods of high demand caused by extreme cold.
It is rare to experience these scenarios within a two-week period and we want customers to know that HG&E consistently takes steps to prevent situations like this from occurring. HG&E's preventative maintenance plan has earned American Public Power Association's (APPA) highest recognition for reliability. As part of this rigorous maintenance plan, all underground electric equipment is inspected every three years so improvements can be made based on the age of various components. Once the incident investigations are complete, HG&E will review the regular maintenance plan and make adjustments accordingly."
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