Published Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Brownout affects Newnan Utilities customers

By Sarah Fay Campbell

The Newnan Times-Herald

An issue at the V.C. Street electrical substation led to a short blackout/brownout for Newnan Utilities customers Monday afternoon.

All three phases of the three-phase system blinked, said Ed Strong, director of engineering for Newnan Utilities. One of those phases "actually dropped out for two or three minutes," he said.

That meant that some customers completely lost power. Others just experienced blinks, and some partially lost power.

Strong said the issue was with Georgia Power.

He said he believes Georgia Power was attempting to switch the substation from being served by Plant Yates to being served from Thomaston. That transition was when the problem occurred.

"They saw the problem and then they switched it back to the other feed," Strong said.

The outage affected all customers served through the V.C. Street substation, located on the west side of downtown Newnan, Strong said.