Tri-Cities PUD asked customers to turn down heat as power lost for 2,750 homes

The Benton PUD asked customers to turn down their thermostats and unplug unused electric appliances at 7 a.m. Saturday as it struggled with a power outage in East Kennewick and Finley.

Power was restored at 7:45 a.m., but the public utility district asked people to continue using as little power as possible until 9 a.m. as a precaution.

A transmission line outage at about 2 a.m. shut off power to about 2,750 customers east of Dague Road and south of Schuster Road.

Crews began patrolling 10 miles of power lines in the dark to look for the source of the outage, and the PUD then expected power to be restored by 4 or 5 a.m.

But the cause was not found until 7 a.m. The PUD then began to shift the load on its system to restore power.

A bad insulator in a substation turned out to be the problem, said Jodi Henderson, spokeswoman for the PUD. No problems with grid instability was evident, she said.

East Kennewick customers posted about the outage through the early morning on social media.

“Well I think we all got a little taste (just a little) of what those poor folks are going thru in Texas!!” one person posted to the Benton PUD Facebook page. “Sending lots of Prayers!”

“On Haney and no power, rushing to take care of all the baby animals that need their heat lamps,” another person posted just before 4 a.m.

Others offered support to crews working in the cold.

“Thank you, BPUD crew, for working so diligently in the middle of a cold winter night!” read one post.

Anyone still without power should report it at 888-582-2176.

This story was originally published February 20, 2021 at 8:56 AM.