Power outage covered large areas of Richland

Large areas of Richland, including south Richland, lost power late Monday morning.

Bonneville Power Administration reported that a 115 kilovolt line tripped at about 11 a.m.

A crane doing work at an elementary school under construction for the Kennewick School District either touched the line or came close enough for electricity to arc, according to BPA. No one was injured.

The outage caused two Richland substations to lose their electrical feed, taking out power to much of Richland south of the Yakima River and an area north of the Yakima River to Swift Avenue.

Some traffic lights were not working.

Richland switched customers to other substations as quickly as possible, while BPA crews worked to test and then re-energize the line. It restored service to the substations about 11:45 a.m.

BPA equipment worked as designed, said Kevin Wingert, BPA spokesman.

“Within a second, the line faulted because of contact, the system attempted to close the line and re-energize. but detected the presence of a fault still on the line and took the line out of service,” he said. “This provides greater stability in the system.”

It also protects those where the problem occurred, he said.

Richland residents who did not have power Monday afternoon, despite their neighbors having power, were being told to try flipping the main breaker in their breaker panel.

This story was originally published July 31, 2017 at 11:33 AM with the headline "Power outage covered large areas of Richland."