Mini power outages strike South Shore

By Kathryn Reed

Power has been flickering off for brief moments for the past two mornings on the South Shore.

NV Energy took the main line serving the Meyers substation out of service on July 19.

“When that occurred, the electric load was shifted to another line on Kingsbury Grade with a wire that had apparently been damaged sometime earlier in the year by a falling tree,” Karl Walquist, spokesman for the electric company, said. “The additional electric load, and associated heat, caused the damaged line to fall to the ground, knocking out service to the Meyers substation at 8:48am and causing a small fire.”

Service on the California side was out for a few minutes while crews re-energized the line that had been taken offline. Customers near Heavenly Mountain Resort in Nevada were without power for about an hour because the affected line is in the middle of Kingsbury Grade near Palisades and Easy Streets.

However, the California outage affected more people – about 16,000 customers from Meyers to Al Tahoe.

While crews were back working on the Meyers substation Tuesday morning, about 9,000 customers lost power at 10:28am. The one-minute blackout hit Meyers, the Y, Upper Truckee and Gardner Mountain.