Back to top
For immediate release
October 7, 2008 at 1:16pm
For more information, contact
Patti Bogan, 762-4736; Cell 242-0704

Chugach members lose power due to first snowfall

Weather-related outages left about 4,500 Chugach customers served by the Jewel Lake Substation without power early this morning.

Shortly after midnight a snow-loaded tree fell into a 34,500-volt sub-transmission line that supplies power to the Jewel Lake Substation. When the tree came into contact with the line it tripped protective breakers, de-energizing the line and the substation it feeds. That caused an outage to the 4,520 Chugach members served by the substation. Power to those members was restored about 2 hours later.

At 9 a.m. about 100 Chugach customers were without power due to trees and branches that had touched or fallen into lines because of the heavy, wet snow overnight, creating electrical faults that caused multiple outages. The areas affected at that time were near Cranberry, Raspberry and Sand Lake roads, Dimond Boulevard, Minnesota Bypass, Beaver Place and Patterson Street. Crews have been dispatched and Chugach expects power to be restored by this afternoon. Two crews have been sent to restore power in Indian, Portage and Cooper Landing areas.

Weather conditions like this can create outages large and small. Chugach encourages members out of power to call and report their outage. The number for customer service is 563-7366.

Chugach is the largest electric utility in Alaska, providing power for Alaskans throughout the Railbelt through retail, wholesale and economy energy sales.