Statement on Power Outages April 23-24, 2019

Category: Uncategorized   |   Posted On: April 25, 2019

On Tuesday, April 23, 2019, at 9:24 pm, an underground cable failure on the Lower Common circuit caused 500 customers between Waverley Square and Common Street to lose power.  The cable failure was due to aging infrastructure which was slated for replacement as part of Belmont Light’s system upgrade project.  Customers in the affected area were restored to power at 11:47 pm.

Unrelated to the Tuesday night event, at approximately 11:35 pm on Wednesday, April 24, 2019, a failure of a cable attached to a transformer at the 450 Concord Avenue substation caused a large-scale power outage that affected multiple areas in Belmont, including Belmont Hill, Waverley Square, and Belmont Center.  Approximately 4,000 customers were affected by the outage.  All customers were restored to full power by 1:50 am on Thursday, April 25, 2019. 

Prior to Wednesday night’s event, for substation maintenance purposes, electric load had been transferred to the cable that subsequently failed, making the size of the outage larger than it would have typically been.  Fortunately, Belmont Light crews had completed the maintenance earlier in the day and were awaiting reenergization of a transformer, so Belmont Light was able to switch the failed cable to the newly refurbished equipment.  The failed cable will be replaced with new equipment.

Belmont Light thanks all customers for their patience as restoration work was conducted during the two outages, especially those customers who experienced outages on back-to-back nights.  At this time, Belmont Light does not expect any further issues with electric service, although we are consistently performing maintenance and repair work in order to prevent outages like these in the future.