A power-line problem near Wasilla Monday night triggered a brief but large-scale outage across much of Southcentral Alaska, as utilities automatically dropped customers to prevent a blackout.
Chugach Electric spokeswoman Julie Hasquet said Tuesday that the outage, which began at about 5:30 p.m. Monday, ultimately affected about 45,000 of the utility’s customers. The Matanuska Electric Association also saw about 20,000 members lose power as far north as Denali State Park.
A fault along a transmission line roughly 10 miles north of Wasilla took two Chugach power-generation units offline, according to Hasquet, triggering a “load shedding” event as the Railbelt utilities cut power to some members. Both utilities reported most power restored in about 90 minutes.
Hasquet said crews traveled along the transmission line Monday night but couldn’t immediately find the source of the fault, which can often be contact with tree branches or wildlife. On Tuesday morning, an aerial survey was following up on that search.
“Today, they’re out actually flying the line, looking to find what it was that triggered the fault in the transmission line,” Hasquet said.
The outage affected about half of Chugach’s roughly 92,000 members, as well as some local traffic lights during Anchorage’s evening commute, but Hasquet said claims on social media of the entire city losing power during the outage were untrue.
“There were parts of the Hillside that were unaffected; there were parts of Midtown that were unaffected,” Hasquet said. “It was definitely not all of the city.”
The Chugach members who lost power Monday were in areas designated in advance to do so during a load-shedding event, Hasquet said, based on a list intended to protect Anchorage’s critical infrastructure like hospitals and military bases. A similar load shedding event in February, caused by a gas leak at an MEA facility in Eklutna, saw about 12,000 Chugach members lose power.
Hasquet called Monday’s outage a good reminder for Alaskans to prepare for power losses heading into the fall, as the region’s September windstorm season approaches.
“Make a plan with your family of what you would do in a power outage,” she said. “There’s never a better time to plan for an emergency than before it happens.”
Chris Klint is a web producer and breaking news reporter at Alaska Public Media. Reach him atcklint@alaskapublic.org.Read more about Chrishere.
