Plaza Loses Power As CL&P Does Its Work

Sand Hill Plaza and the surrounding area was left in the dark for about an hour Wednesday morning after wires along Route 25 snapped and fell into the road.

Connecticut Light & Power (CL&P) General Manager Bill Stax said the power outage took place as crews replaced old wire with new wire.

“We’re replacing old copper wire with new large conductor aluminum tree wire, and that large aluminum conductor has a coding which allows for brush contact without interruption,” Mr Stax said. “In some places, the old copper had previously been damaged over the years by lightning and contact with trees during storms. As they physically move that wire, and pull new wire in, for safety reasons, if anything occurs the line will go out of service. In this case, the wire was previously damaged. When they physically moved the wire out, the strain of moving it caused the wire to fall into the road. When that happens, they have to de-energize the line, ground it, pull the wire back up, and splice it. Then they re-energize it so customers have service again.”

In addition to Sand Hill Plaza, homes along Huntington, Meadowbrook, and Brushy Hill roads also lost power.

“We sincerely regret this occurring, but in the process of improving service, unfortunately this sometimes happens,” Mr Stax said. “That area has had a number of interruptions, but when this is finished, reliability to that whole section will be improved.”