Your PUD News Release

Rain may have played a role in Cashmere power outage

Chelan County PUD
News Release
11/2/2008

Between 300 and 400 Chelan County PUD customers in Cashmere were without power for several hours early Sunday morning following an outage triggered by problems at the Jarvis Substation.

The outage was reported about 1:20 a.m. Sunday. All customers were back in power by about 5:15 a.m. Power was restored by switching the load served by the Jarvis Substation to Cashmere’s other two substations. Jarvis Substation remains out of service. Repairs to damaged bus work are scheduled to start Monday morning.

PUD Distribution Engineering Manager Chad Rissman said heavy rain late Saturday night may have contributed to the equipment failure. Bus work is the connection between the substation transformer and the breakers for power flow to lines serving customers. Jarvis Substation was built in the 1950s, and heavy rain may have caused aging insulation to finally give way, Rissman said.

He praised PUD linemen, substation wiremen, engineers and system operators for a well coordinated response to the outage just two days after the PUD assumed ownership of the city’s electric system.

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Kimberlee Craig
Public Information Officer
Chelan County PUD
(509) 661-4320 office
(509) 679-6858 mobile