Tuesday 09/22/15 Severe Weather and Outage Event

Madame Mayor, Honorable Commissioners and CM Bornstein

Here is a synopsis of the event that occurred last night:

Severe weather rolled into the Lake Worth Service Territory, bringing torrential rains, heavy winds and frequent lightning strikes.

At 19:17pm the electric system received 3 simultaneous lightning strikes, one in the main yard, one on the 26B1E09 circuit and one on the 11th Ave North Substation, causing the system relays to respond, preventing equipment damage, as well as allowing for personnel and customer safety. This caused a major outage affecting approximately 13300 customers in the Eastern portion of the Service Territory.

After investigating the cause and performing system checks to verify no equipment damage, Systems Operations and Field Personnel began the restoration process within 23minutes.

19:40pm, 8870 customers were restored – 23 minutes
20:19pm, 1350 customers were restored – 62 minutes
20:34pm, 500 customers restored – 77minutes
20:50pm, remaining 2580 customers restored – 93 minutes

Total outage time for all customers ranged from 23mintues to 93 minutes

Communications from field staff and operations flowed smoothly allowing for me to keep the Mayor, CM and the media informed of all restoration throughout the event

Electric Utilities Department
Your home town service people
Walt Gill
Assistant Electric Utilities Director