(Estherville)– The lights are slowly coming on today (Fri.) in the northeast following Thursday’s massive power outage.
Rick Olson is the Operations Manager with Iowa Lakes Electric Cooperative in Estherville. He says the outage did not directly affect any utility companies in our region. But Olson says they are keeping a close eye on the situation…even as power is being restored…as the various distribution systems are connected through the grid.
Olson says officials with Corn Belt Power, the company that distributes power to a large part of our region, saw wild fluctuations in power distribution as the outages in the northeast were occurring. Fortunately, Olson says, it didn’t trip any systems here in the upper midwest.
Alliant Energy issued a statement saying its infrastructure was minimally impacted and is in stable condition. Alliant says one of three units at its Edgewater power plant in Sheboygan, Wisconsin tripped off-line at 3:14 p.m. central time Thursday as a result of the northeastern outage, but was returned to service shortly before 5:00 p.m.
Officials with Alliant Energy say they’ve had no reports of outages in their four-state service territory, and they don’t expect any problems in meeting consumer demand as a result of the northeastern outage.
