Electric company assures planned power outage won’t affect polling stations [Norwalk Reflector, Ohio]

Nov. 03--Firelands Electric Cooperative will be performing upgrades, starting Tuesday, which will improve the reliability of their system in southwest Huron County.

The brief outage will not affect polling stations on Election Day.

The Norwich Township voting precinct, located on Section Line 30, is the only polling station situated in the outage coverage area.

Firelands' Director of Line Operations Denny Marrugg said the Cooperative is taking action to ensure the polling station won't have an interruption of power on Tuesday.

"Firelands is taking measures to confirm power won't be interrupted at the Norwich Township Hall on Election Day," Marugg added.

Firelands' General Manager April Bordas apologized for the inconvenience of these brief power interruptions. "We checked with the Huron County Board of Elections Director, Sharon Locke, who states their equipment has a battery backup system used in the event of a power interruption," Bordas said.

Firelands' Steuben Substation provides electric service to about 1,400 member-consumers in Bronson, Fairfield, Greenfield, Norwich, Peru and Richmond townships. The substation receives its transmission power from First Energy/Ohio Edison and has experienced a number of transmission outages over the last several years due to problems with the transmission line. To insure an adequate supply of cost-effective, reliable power, Firelands Electric Cooperative has built the Willard Chase Substation, which receives its transmission power from American Electric Power (AEP). The new substation allows backfeed capability to Firelands' Steuben Substation when there are disruptions on the transmission system.

To switch phases over to the new substation, some of Firelands' members receiving electricity from the Steuben Substation will experience a brief outage Tuesday, Nov. 5, at about 1 p.m., which will last about 15 minutes. This work may be delayed, based on weather conditions.

Additional phase switching will take place Nov. 11 to 14, resulting in short and intermittent outages throughout the week, between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. The cooperative will do its best to limit these outages and keep outage times to a minimum.

As a reminder, outage updates are available at the website, www.FirelandsEC.com, on our Facebook page and Twitter feeds.

Firelands Electric, A Touchstone Energy Partner, is a member-owned, not-for-profit electric cooperative providing electric service to about 9,000 homes and businesses in rural areas of Ashland, Huron, Lorain and Richland counties.

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