A malfunction in a Hydro One transformer station in Fort Frances left the town and approximately 3,600 additional district residents without power for about 10 minutes Tuesday afternoon.
“It was a Hydro One cause,” said Fort Frances Power Corporation CEO Jim Kibiuk yesterday. At the time, FFPC did not yet know what the problem was but calls had gone out to Hydro One officials.
The disruption began at 2:41 p.m. and lasted until 2:51 p.m. according to Hydro One media representative Al Manchee.
“The problem was with a transformer station in Fort Frances that feeds FFPC,” Manchee explained from his office in Toronto.
Manchee went on to say half of the station was shut down for routine maintenance at the time and the load was transferred to the remaining half. He said the the transformer should have been able to handle the additional load, but for some reason it failed to do so.
In addition to Fort Frances, the outage affected Couchinching F.N. and the townships of Morson, Lash, Rainy River, Crozier, Watten, and Halkirk.
Traffic lights were inoperative for that period, but there have been no reports of traffic problems as a result.
