Substation failure knocks out power From staff reports

Published Tuesday, May 15, 2001 2:24 PM CDT

More than 5,000 Entergy customers lost power Monday night when an electrical device failed at the north McComb substation on Summit-Holmesville Road.

Entergy customer service manager Jim Hedges said a substation electrical device failed at around 10:24 p.m. The failure creating a large electric arc which damaged 14 1-foot tall ceramic insulators. A protective device took the substation off-line to prevent further damage.

The incident caused an outage that affected some 5,100 Entergy customers in Summit and parts of north, east and south McComb.

Hedges said the McComb Entergy crew worked to replace the damaged insulators. Customers had power restored by 1:56 this morning.

Entergy workers are still trying to find the cause of the failure.

Hedges said employees did maintenance work in the substation less than two months ago. He said crews will be back in the substation for more inspections and to complete non-essential repairs.

“Although this was a significant outage with serious damage in the substation, our crews quickly assessed the damage and made fast work of replacing many large insulators,” Hedges said.

“It could be just a failed component. Our guys did a heck of job to get in there and see what the problem was and see what was going on,” Hedges said.

Bobby Brown, Entergy account manager in McComb, was driving north on Interstate 55 below Magnolia at the time of the outage.

“I saw a very bright flash on the east side of the interstate and it lit up the entire sky.”

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-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), May 15, 2001