Government

Village power restored, more outages to be expected

Greenport Village residents may expect more power outages in the wake of Thursday’s village-wide blackout. This time, however, the outages will be pre-planned and are needed to return the village’s electric system to its normal state, according to a statement from village officials.

Around 7:30 a.m. Thursday, a relay problem caused both substations at the village power plant to trip offline while crews were performing switching operations — a step needed to test the plant’s circuit breakers, according to officials. That precluded a string of other equipment malfunctions causing some sections of the village to be without power until 11 p.m. that night.

Crews were quickly able to restore service to four of the six circuits before running into a problem in the older section of the substation, which prevented the entire system from being restored at the same time, the statement said.

Consequently, crews were forced to disconnect multiple sections of the grid and bring back power slowly to avoid an overload of the system, officials said. The dozens of disconnected transformers were then reconnected manually, one at a time, according to the statement.

“This is an arduous and time consuming process, but it is the only possible way to ensure the restoration of service in a safe and reliable manner,” officials said in a statement.

Although power is fully restored, the village is still experiencing issues with the two remaining downed circuits, according to the statement.

“Please note that, at some point, we will need to restore the entire system to its normal state, which may require brief, pre-planned outages,” the statement says.

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