Power outage in Lyon County due to bad cable

A Lyon County power outage affected approximately 2,400 NV Energy utility customers, a spokesperson for the power company said Friday.

The Thursday afternoon and evening outage lasted from 5:37 until 10:52 p.m. for at least some of those affected, said Faye Andersen, NV Energy communications manager for Northern Nevada.

She said the problem was caused by a bad underground cable, which took a while to locate and repair. She said workers had to test three sections of cable in an area before learning where work was needed. She said such problems can take time depending on circumstances.

“Especially with underground it’s hard to know,” she said, speaking of where to locate a trouble spot in the system, “so it usually takes a little longer when it’s underground” rather than an overhead line responsible. She gave as an example the ease of finding an overhead line problem that stems from a tree limb falling on the line.

Andersen said the 2,400 customers affected at first was cut to about 1,900 by 7:30 p.m. She said that number again was cut to 1,200 a couple of hours later. She said power was restored to all those users who had found themselves without power in Dayton before 11 p.m.

“The cable failed,” she said, “so we had to go and do some repair.”