Neighbors frustrated at re-setting clocks, timers
A mobile substation was brought in to National Grid's Teall Avenue substation after equipment failure led to a big power outage, but it's had problems, too
/ Photojournalist Brian Erb
After three big power outages since Friday, National Grid is no longer sending power to the neighborhoods affected from its troubled Teall Avenue substation. Instead, electricity is being routed in from other substations until permanent repairs are made, and the utility says it will be a fairly extensive process.
It all started Friday evening, when a piece of equipment that controls the voltage flowing through the system at the complex behind the old GM plant in Salina failed. The utility brought in a bypass, a mobile substation. It's a piece of equipment that's often used to provide power at major outages or disasters. It worked, but on Saturday morning, a related problem: a transformer in one of the neighborhoods affected failed, apparently from the stress caused by the Friday outage. Then on Tuesday morning, another failure: the cable connecting the mobile substation to the troubled unit also went bad. That blacked out over ten thousand customers on Syracuse's north side, Eastwood, Lyncourt, Salina and DeWitt, many of them for the third time.
"Resetting everything," the order of the day for neighbors, including Matt Olmstead on Syracuse's north side. "If it has a clock on it, it needs to be reset. Timers, everything. I actually missed my alarm this mornng because I forgot to readjust everything, so it was still blinking twelve."
National Grid's Regional Executive Director for Central New York, Melanie Littlejohn, says the utility is still in the process of making repairs, both to the mobile sub station and the substation itself. And, National Grid crews are also checking transformers and other equipment possibly stressed by the failures.
One concern, the hot weather. "I have a grandmother, 87 years old, and I gotta make sure she has what she needs through the day." National Grid is monitoring demand for power, and says that so far there are no red flags.
And, customers that have been hit by power outages are not getting their electricity from the Teall Ave. substation. The utility is feeding power from other substations to the neighborhoods, until the repairs are completed.
