Fairhope, Alabama
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| Fairhope Ave. substation. |
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| Hwy 181 signals out. |
Power was out this afternoon on the east side of town because of a failure at the Fairhope Avenue electric substation; police officers had to direct traffic at some intersections.
Cause of the failure was not announced, but one source said it may be related to a lightning strike in an earlier storm.
Plans are in now the works to replace this substation with a higher capacity one on nearby Morphy Avenue; it sometimes exceeds designed capacity (110%).
Update from city of Fairhope:
"Our Electric Department has identified the cause of yesterday’s outage as several station insulators exploding, but the reason for is still unknown. There is a theory that the extreme lightning we had on Tuesday night caused a weak spot in one or two that eventually tracked and cross-phased.
The insulators were replaced along with the station fuses that were blown, the substation was reenergized and load was restored. The outage lasted two hours and affected approximately 1,960 customers. "
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