It appears an aviation marker ball is to blame for Sunday night’s power outage in downtown Juneau.
The red ball wore through a transmission line and it broke, knocking out power to about 3,800 customers between 6 and 8 p.m.
Alaska Electric Light and Power crews were able to restore electricity in less than two hours by rerouting energy through a distribution cable that runs along the Juneau-Douglas Bridge.
Crews Monday figured out the cause and will analyze the transmission line more closely, says A-E-L & P spokeswoman Deb Ferreira.
“The amount of wind that’s in that channel certainly could cause the ball to move, wearing through the line,” Ferreira says. “But we’ll know better when we actually have it here and we’re able to look at it.”
She says a new transmission line will be installed this morning.
“They’re running a brand new transmission line, and then there’ll be some splicing and tensioning to get it to where it needs to be and at that point they will be able to re-energize the line. But they expect they’ll be able to finish all of that by noon,” she says.
Ferreira says A-E-L and P did not burn any diesel during the outage.
