FERGUS – Fergus was in the dark for three hours early July 30 as faulty customer equipment knocked out power throughout the town.
Centre Wellington Hydro president Wayne Dyce said they got a call just before 4am that power was out throughout the town. Other parts of the township were not affected.
“Crews did a patrol,” he said in a phone interview around noon the same day. “It took a while to find it.”
Dyce said the culprit was faulty customer equipment – specifically a lightning arrester and insulator.
He said some of their larger customers have their own equipment as they connect to CW Hydro lines and in this case, their equipment failed.
“It wasn’t a person’s fault; the apparatus faulted,” Dyce said. “Just like our equipment can cause an outage, sometimes these occur on customer-owned equipment.
“It’s relatively infrequent, but it does happen.”
Dyce said crews had to isolate a section of the line to do the repair. Power was fully restored by 7am.
