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Cause of Thursday's Olds power outage under investigation

At its height, the Feb. 1 power outage in Olds and area affected 1,038 customers
MVT power pole
A power outage in Olds and area outage at 1:08 a.m. Feb. 1 and power was fully restored at 2:41 a.m. File photo/MVP Staff

OLDS — FortisAlberta workers are still trying to determine the cause of a power outage in Olds and area that lasted more than 90 minutes in the early morning of Feb. 1.

At its height, the outage affected 1,038 customers.

Tanya Croft, FortisAlberta’s manager of corporate communications, says the outage began at 1:08 a.m. and power was fully restored at 2:41 a.m.

Croft said when the power first went out, 1,038 customers were affected.

But thanks to new technology, known as distributed automation, power was restored virtually immediately to about a thousand of them.

However, power remained off for the rest until the repairs were fully completed.

“It isolates the issue and reroutes power so that we can get on as many customers as you can. And then once we have it isolated, we do have to keep the power off to make the repairs safely (and) quickly,” Croft said during an interview with the Albertan.

Croft said the precise cause of the outage was still being determined later on Feb. 1.

“The team was back on site this morning taking a look at that and seeing what needed to happen just to make sure that doesn't happen again,” she said.

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