Substation issue causes power outage

Power was restored late Wednesday morning to more than 2,000 NorthWestern Energy customers after a problem with the relay in the Havre eastside substation was diagnosed.

The permanent fix is being worked on this morning, company spokesperson Butch Larcombe said.

“We were able to restore service by rerouting power from other substations to the affected area, giving our crew a window to diagnose the problem and make repairs. We expect to have the parts we need and repairs made this morning,” Larcombe said in an email this morning.

Larcombe said Wednesday morning that 2,078 customers were without power at the time.

The outage affected schools like Havre High School and Sunnyside Intermediate School. A representative of HHS said that school only lost power for about five minutes.

The outage was reported Wednesday at about 9:30 a.m., Larcombe said. Power to everyone was restored at about 11 a.m. the same day.

“The outage was caused by a problem with relay equipment in our Havre eastside substation,” Larcombe said.

Relay equipment links substations to other substations and power lines and other pieces of the energy grid, Larcombe said.