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Politics & Government

Cause Of Brief Power Outage Found

Diesel generator sparks, shuts down Beacon substation as temperatures soar.

About 1,000 Marblehead electricity customers lost power today for 50 minutes in the early afternoon as the temperature outside hit the low 90s.

The Beacon substation, located at the town's trash transfer station, serves Beacon Streets and West Shore Drive in the northern and western sections of town. It was shut down when a diesel generator started creating sparks as it was turned on at about 1:35 p.m.

Robert Jolly, general manager of the Municipal Light Department, dispatched three two-man crews to connect the affected customers to the Village substation, which was built 10 years ago and has "plenty of capacity," he said.

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Jolly told his board that the crews brought all the customers without electricity back on line by 2:25 p.m.

"It is quite a system we have," he said, pointing out the large amount of redundancy built into the Marblehead system to allow for various contingencies.

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The 2.5 megawatt diesel generator was turned on this afternoon to provide power through the New England Independent System Operator to meet the demand for electricity across the regional grid, Jolly said. The light department uses its excess capacity to supply power throughout the region, earning the town-owned system a profit.

When the generator caused sparks, a switch automatically shut down the Beacon substation. The generator and substation will be off line for a few days while a testing company checks out the generator and recommends repairs, he said.

Jolly said the outage was not caused by the high temperatures, but he told his board that Marblehead hit a new high demand peak for the last several years. On July 6th, demand hit slightly more than 28 megawatts. The all-time high for electricity demand in town was about 30 megawatts four years ago, Jolly said.

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