POINT PLEASANT, W.Va. — An equipment failure at an Appalachian Power Company substation in Point Pleasant has knocked service off to several thousand customers in Mason County.
Appalachian Power spokesperson Karen Wissing said the equipment failure happened at shortly after 1 a.m. Wednesday and initially cut power to 7,560 customers, which is about half of utility’s total customers in the county.
Wissing told WMOV Radio they were able to make some switches and get a few thousand customers back in service. There remained 3,800 customers without service at 11:30 a.m.
A mobile transformer would be used to get a number of customers back on while repairs continue at the substation, Wissing said.
“It’s a piece of special equipment that we use with major outages and it allows us to restore a percentage of the larger pocket of outages,” Wissing said.
The mobile transformer will bring 20% of the remaining customers back on line. Wissing said it would likely be around 7 p.m. Wednesday before power is restored to all customers.
It was 33 degrees in Point Pleasant Wednesday with temperatures expected to reach 43. The low Wednesday night was predicted to fall to the mid-20s.
Point Pleasant High School was scheduled to open as a warming center at 2 p.m. Wednesday.