We now know what caused that massive power outage in July - East Idaho News
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We now know what caused that massive power outage in July

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IDAHO FALLS — Remember that massive power outage in July when 100,000 customers lost electricity?

We now know what caused it and you can blame some birds for the inconvenience.

“Two crows landed on a capacitor which is used to control voltage,” Rocky Mountain Power spokesman David Eskelsen tells EastIdahoNews.com. “That caused an electrical fault which then turned into an electrical arc.”

Eskelsen says the electrical arc caused the capacitor to rupture and catch fire, which then burned itself out. In normal circumstances, two high-speed relays typically divert power to a different capacitor.

“The relays are like switches and one of those failed,” Eskelsen says.

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The failure of the relay caused the electrical fault to travel throughout the substation, which effectively shut it down.

Four different utility companies use the Goshen substation and it supplies power to other substations in east Idaho.

After the failure, electricity was out for over two hours in many locations.

“There were quite a bit of customers affected by the outage,” Eskelsen says. “We had engineers on scene pretty quickly trying to fix the problem.”

Eskelsen says measures are in place to discourage animals and birds from getting near substations but their designs naturally attract wildlife.

Modifications have been made to the substation to prevent this kind of fault from happening again, according to Eskelsen.

“We learned from this and we have fixed the problem,” Eskelsen says. “We can’t prevent every power outage but we can learn from these.”

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