High demand causes power outages By Doug Meyer

On a day that saw the highest demand ever for electricity in New England, an insulator failure Wednesday afternoon on a utility pole in Swampscott’s Reddington-Blarney neighborhood caused 600 people to lose their power for several hours.

The outage, which reportedly sparked a utility pole fire at the Reddington- Blarney intersection, occured around 3:45 p.m., according to a Massachusetts Electric spokesman.

By 5:45 p.m., more than half of the customers affected had their power service returned, according to the spokesman, but others were reportedly still without power at press time.

A related power outage was also reported in downtown Lynn and neighborhoods bordering Swampscott.

The Mass Electric spokesman said the fire would probably require replacing the damaged utility pole’s cross arm.

Meanwhile, all of New England was placed on energy alert in the third straight day of sizzling temperatures and humidity — marking an official heat wave — threatened the area’s electricity reserve.

According to Craig Kazin, a spokesman for New England Independent System Operator (ISO), a spike in energy demand Tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m. pushed the needle to 23,709 megawatts consumed. That figure, a new record, stood for roughly 24 hours until Wednesday afternoon at 4 p.m. At that time, power usage in the six-state New England grid jumped to about 24,200 megawatts, Kazin said.

In spite of the record thirst for energy this week, Kazin reassured that there was no danger of a blackout at any time over the past three days. Kazin attributed this to the cushion provided by the current excess of generator capacity in New England, a situation exactly opposite to California’s recent energy woes. He added, though, that the ISO is asking consumers to practice energy conservation measures, a precaution taken as the region went to the “edge” of reserve power supply Wednesday.

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-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), July 26, 2001