Village of Merrillan - Electric Outage - Partial – Incident details

This incident has been resolved.

Field Action: Exhaustively patrolled lines on foot and by truck from approximately 9:00 PM to 1 AM. Checked all spans, creek crossings, and terminations. Found no branches, crossed wires, or physical faults. Disconnected the transformer near the lightning strike, but the 25A fuse continued to blow.

Performed a second comprehensive physical line inspection during daylight hours before attempting further re-energization; confirmed zero physical hazards or line contact present.

Conclusion: The nearby lightning strike did not cause physical damage, but it severely unbalanced the electrical charge on this portion of the system. Without a ground wire to bleed off that extra energy, closing the final door caused a massive, momentary surge of "charging power" that kept popping the tight 25A fuse.

Fix: At 8:00 AM, stepped up to a 50A fuse to handle that initial startup surge and reversed the phase-closing sequence. The line stabilized immediately, restored power, and has been holding for 5+ hours.

Unfortunately we have not been able to locate the source of the outage so far after driving and walking the outage area multiple times. We will have to wait until daylight to better identify what the cause may be.

We are still working to locate the source of the outage.