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An issue with a 46 KV transmission line that serves two Lake Country Power substations (Clear Lake and Winton) caused a sudden loss of service for more than 1,900 cooperative members in northern Minnesota along with over 400 City of Ely customers. The outage started at 3:00 a.m. Tuesday and was resolved by 8:59 a.m., followed by a momentary outage that was resolved quickly by staggering load.
Earlier Tuesday, Lake Country Power line crews helped with switching and then allowed Minnesota Power crews to patrol and repair the transmission line. Metal wires contract and get tight when temperatures are bitterly cold which contributed to a splice in the transmission line breaking.
“The splice was the point of failure in the transmission line where the tight wires pulled apart,” said Derek Howe, P.E., director of operations for Lake Country Power.
Areas impacted by the outages this morning included Ely, Tower, Soudan, Embarrass, Babbitt and other surrounding areas.
Members may call the cooperative at 1-800-421-9959 to report an outage, or visit the Outage Center online at www.lakecountrypower.coop or http://outage.lcp.coop for an outage status.
Lake Country Power, www.lakecountrypower.coop, is a Touchstone Energy® cooperative serving parts of eight counties in northeastern Minnesota. The rural electric cooperative provides services to nearly 44,000 members and has offices located in Cohasset, Kettle River and Mountain Iron.
