The power outage that happened on Tuesday, October 19, proved to be an incredible inconvenience for all of us here in the City of Cuyahoga Falls and I want to provide you with an overview of what went wrong with FirstEnergy’s pole that caused the large-scale outage in our city. Arcing caused a FirstEnergy main transmission pole to catch fire and break near the top. This was just outside of our city limits on Portage Trail Extension in Akron. The damage tripped the FirstEnergy breaker that supplies our substation next to Valley Vista Park. The Valley Substation serves over half of our city. To access the extremely high pole, two massive FirstEnergy bucket trucks were needed. A section of guardrail needed to be removed and some trees needed cut down to get the trucks close to the damaged pole. The broken section was lifted and secured with clamps to the remaining section of the pole. The next nearest pole needed extenders fabricated to raise the transmission line back to the proper height for the required 6' of line separation. All wires were reattached. The pole will need completely replaced in the near future, but is secure for now.
Once power was restored, the FirstEnergy breaker that supplies our substation would not close to make the connection. Generators were brought in to gradually supply power to the main breaker to force it to operate. This was also unsuccessful. It was then determined that the electronic protective relay circuit was preventing the breaker from operating. Once this code was cleared, the main breaker finally functioned giving our city power. This is where we come in. Our Cuyahoga Falls Electric Department employees were waiting at our substations throughout the city to bring power on gradually. All customers coming on at once would cause a massive surge and trip the main breaker again. They were successful in bringing us all back on gradually and safely.
During the night, we were able to provide critical services using generators. Our water plant, police station, 5 fire stations, and 911 dispatch center were able to provide uninterrupted service. We attached generators to traffic signals at main intersections as well. Fortunately, Western Reserve Hospital was in power using a large generator.
The logical question is, how can this be prevented in the future? Even prior to this outage, we have been actively engaged in a planning process to bring a third main transmission line into our city to offer more redundancy. This will help eliminate widespread outages barring a horrific weather event. To help minimize small outages, we are also working to tie all substations together to offer redundancy on a smaller scale. Although these extended outages are infrequent, they are painful. I can't speak for First Energy, but I am sorry for the inconvenience we all suffered.
Questions about the outage can be directed to FirstEnergy at 1-800-633-4766