January 4, 2023 – On Tuesday night, a malfunction at the Ameren Wood Heights substation left hundreds of Excelsior Springs residents without electricity for nearly 5 hours. According to Ameren Executive, and Excelsior Springs resident, Mike Edwards, a fault in a line at the substation impacted a majority of customers living in downtown Excelsior Springs, on Golf Hill, and south of Excelsior Springs down to the city wells near the water plant. The outage began Tuesday around 9:23 PM and power was fully restored at approximately 1:30 AM Wednesday morning.
Some lucky residents experienced only a brief 1 to 2-minute outage before power was restored. Edwards said those customers benefited from Ameren’s participation in Missouri’s Smart Energy Plan. This statewide infrastructure upgrade was created by 2018 state legislation after damage from tornadoes in 2017 left many Missouri residents without power for an extended period of time. The plan allows energy companies such as Ameren to make large capital investments in smart switches and other equipment that allow for less downtime of systems during emergencies.
Edwards said the smart switches Ameren installed helped reroute power during the outage caused by the faulty line. “The [smart] switches were designed to be able to see that fault and they were able to [restore power to] a large percentage of customers in that one-minute time frame,” he said.
After the smart switches rerouted power, there were still approximately 644 customers without power. Ameren line workers were able to locate and repair the damaged lines restoring power to those remaining customers. “Our guys did an outstanding job finding [the problem] and making the proper changes and repairs,” said Edwards. “Obviously, we understand the cold temperatures and how impactful that is. We appreciate our customer’s patience. We try to do everything we can to eliminate both outages and frustration,” he concluded.
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