Published 3/26/2008 
Johnson, Vermont – Vermont Electric Cooperative, Inc., (VEC) has suffered two significant transmission outages in the last week leaving over 4,400+ members served out of the Derby, West Charleston and Island Pond substations in the dark. In each case the failure was on the transmission line that runs along Route 105, between West Charleston and Island Pond. The cause is attributed to faulty insulators.

 The first outage occurred on Wednesday, March 19^th at 6:11 p.m. leaving some of the 4,000+ members without power for about an hour, while others were off for approximately three and a half hours. The second outage occurred Tuesday, March 25^th at 10:45 p.m. and that outage lasted five and a half hours. “Duration of the outages differed because the problem that caused the second outage was not easily accessible from the road and there was extensive fire damage to the pole,” said Jeffrey Wright, VEC’s Chief Operating Officer. “Once the wires were grounded the Charleston Fire Department assisted VEC in putting the fire out and we would like to thank them for their help,” added Wright. 

Thanks to members’ calls notifying VEC of the problem, system operators were able to quickly assess the location of the problems and isolate the faulty section of line. This enabled line workers to restore power to the Derby and West Charleston members sooner than those in Island Pond. 

VEC is currently analyzing the failed insulators to determine if these are two isolated modes of failure or if it is a bigger problem that could cause future failures. As part of the analysis, crews are inspecting every structure looking for additional problems. Although the failures may be aggravated by the weather the initial diagnosis seems to be equipment related failures. 

“We are very concerned with the two recent outages on the transmission line between West Charleston and Island Pond. The line has historically performed well and these two recent failures were totally unexpected,” said Wright. “We apologize for these outages and would like to reassure our Members that we are doing everything to prevent additional failures like these.”

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