Power back after substation fire, but may go out again for some

Residents of northeast Wichita could lose electricity again Wednesday morning as Westar Energy completes repairs to a substation damaged by fire last night, a company official said.

The fire was ignited when a breaker at the substation blew, said Jana Dawson, a Westar substation spokeswoman. The malfunction and fire at about 6 p.m. Tuesday knocked out electricity to more than 8,000 customers at one point Tuesday night.

Some of those customers were able to have electricity restored as Westar workers switched loads to different circuits.

“We can only transfer so many before you would overload another line,” Dawson said.

Officials haven’t pinpointed a cause for the equipment malfunction yet, she said.

“What can happen when you have an excessive load like what we had yesterday - that can put pressure on the equipment and create an equipment failure like that,” Dawson said.

Current estimates project repairs to be completed by about 10 a.m., she said, though some customers may have to be taken off-line this morning as the electricity load is gradually increased again following the repairs. A Westar outage map showed 26 outages involving 186 customers as of 7:20 a.m. Wednesday.

This story was originally published July 6, 2016 at 7:28 AM with the headline "Power back after substation fire, but may go out again for some."