USA, North Carolina: Around 35,000 Duke Energy customers lost power in Wake County after a transmission line was damaged during vegetation-management work.
The outage began at around 2:15 p.m. and mainly affected the Cary and Morrisville areas.
According to Duke Energy, a contracted helicopter crew carrying out vegetation management for the railroad damaged a transmission line, while a tree also fell onto a power line along the tracks in Cary. The helicopter crew was not contracted by Duke Energy.
The utility worked to switch customers onto other lines while repairs were carried out on the damaged equipment. Power was fully restored later in the evening on 3 September.
The incident came during a period of record temperatures and high electricity demand across central North Carolina. Duke Energy said nearly 46,000 customers had experienced outages in the region during the week.The utility said hot and dry conditions had contributed to tree-related risks, particularly where weakened or diseased trees could fall onto power infrastructure.
Duke Energy has also been upgrading its network with self-healing grid technology, which the company said helped restore service to some affected customers within an hour.
Source: Abc11.com
