A large portion of western Morgan and eastern Scott Counties was without power for a few hours Thursday after a piece of equipment failed.
Ameren Illinois spokesperson Brian Bretch told WLDS News this afternoon, that approximately 1,500 Ameren customers were affected by the outage which included Meredosia, Chapin, and Bluffs.
Bretch says as crews were patrolling the lines and investigating the substations immediately after the outage, they found a voltage sensing device inside a substation had failed.
Bretch says power was rerouted within the substation to get customers back on the grid as soon as possible. “So what happens in an outage like that, we will send out people who patrol the lines and people who patrol the substations. So when we found out that the lines were okay, the substation folks found that a voltage-sensing device had malfunctioned.
They isolated it, determined the cause, and then rerouted to get the customers back on and kept a crew on site to make those repairs. Then when it is all said and done, we basically switch the people back who are served by that piece of equipment so we’re not overloading the systems.”
Power was restored to all customers by approximately 5:00 pm Thursday according to Bretch. He says the grid is pretty resilient including the addition of many smart devices that have been implemented over the last several years to help notify or prevent outages.
Bretch says that even though greater smart technology has been added to the grid in the Jacksonville area, you should still call in anytime the power goes out. “Don’t assume that your neighbors have called it in. I get asked the question a lot that, if we have all that smart technology on the lines and in the substations, why do customers still need to call?
All that equipment does help us, but if we have that information plus ten or fifteen people from a neighborhood who have called us, that allows us to respond quicker to that location. So the phone calls do help, the smart technology does work and does what it is supposed to do in letting us know. Sometimes it automatically switches and we’re good there, but it all works hand in hand overall.”
Bretch says there are some instances in which power is lost to the smart technology meaning it can’t activate or report where the problem is. He says other times a quick flash or flicker of the lights in your home means that technology detected a problem and corrected the issue automatically.
Bretch says the smart technology has led to a big reduction in power outages across the Ameren grid, especially since its implementation in the Jacksonville area. If you lose power, Ameren Illinois reminds you to call it in by dialing 1-800-755-5000.