(JACKSON, MN) — More than 2,000 Federated members lost power overnight in Jackson and Martin Counties due to the strong winds causing outages, but all were restored by 4 a.m.
The first major outage affected Martin County when the East Chain, Wilbert and Ceylon substations lost the transmission line feeding those substations; this outage occurred at 6:15 p.m. The Great River Energy transmission line had 11 poles that went down along 60th Street south of Fairmont. After the problem was located, crews back-fed power restoring Ceylon substation at 8:10 p.m. and then East Chain substation at 8:47 p.m. The last substation, Wilbert, was restored at 12:55 a.m. when Federated crews were able to back-feed power to this substation.
Round two came around 10:13 p.m. when the Wilder substation lost power due to the wind. Power was restored there at 12:40 p.m. after crews inspected the lines for damage.
In addition, crews had some isolated individual and sectional outages throughout the two counties.
“Federated thanks members for their patience,” Federated’s Operations Manager George Madden said. “You don’t often see tornado watches in December. Today crews will be repairing broken and leaning poles, plus dangling wires damaged from the gusty winds. Call Federated to report these repairs.”
Federated is a Touchstone Energy cooperative serving more than 6,800 members in Jackson and Martin Counties.