More than 34-hundred Williams Lake and area residents were without power yesterday. (Thursday)
BC Hydro’s Bob Gammer says it impacted more than 34-hundred customers for just over 2 1/2 hours.
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“It was caused by an insulator failure in the Williams Lake substation. With so many customers, it spread over quite an area so we had outages, or the outage extended from the eastern part of Williams Lake through 150-mile and as far out as Horsefly.”
Gammer says generally speaking this sort of thing is caused by wear and tear.
“Most often an insulator failure is when there is dirt accumulating or dust or any kind of material that can allow a path for the electricity to run from one piece of equipment to another, the insulator being that kind of break in the flow in between, and so if it gets dirty it’s possible that electricity can flow over the surface of the insulator.”
Gammer says it can also on occasion be caused by wildlife or birds as well.
The outage went from around 4-50 p.m. until around 7-30.
