About 1,500 customers in Drumheller and surrounding areas were without power Wednesday, January 12, including the Royal Tyrrell Museum, which closed its doors for the day in light of the outage.
Gerhard Schwarz, ATCO Electric customer services supervisor for the southeast region, explains that at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, a distribution breaker failed, which caused one of the transformers in the Michichi substation, one of the main stations feeding Drumheller, to lockout, causing the outage.
The outage affected Carbon, Carbon Rural, Nacmine, Munson, and area south of Drumheller, Michichi and Michichi Rural.
“It affected approximately 1,500 customers. The cause is still under investigation, we are still looking into it,” he said.
“We just know the distribution breaker failed, but we don’t know the exact cause yet. Sometimes it is just equipment failure.”
Power was restored shortly after 1 p.m. Wednesday. By then, the Royal Tyrrell Museum decided to close for the day.
He reiterated that safety is a primary concern for staff and customers and there were no issues during the repair.
“We’re pretty good getting the lights back on when the power is out,” he said. “We excel at that.”