Federated restores power after Monday outage in some areas

About 617 Federated Rural Electric members in the Heron Lake, Okabena and Kinbrae areas, plus the wholesale service to Dundee, lost power shortly after 5 p.m. Monday. The co-op members affected were served by the Heron Lake substation. Power was restored around 7:45 p.m.

A bird landed on the substation equipment, which caused a large arc, affecting Federated and ITC’s service in the joint substation. This outage also temporarily knocked off power for a few minutes to the western half of Jackson County (Federated substations of Minneota, Round Lake, West Lakefield and Miloma) until the transmission line could be backfed from another source. However, the towns of Heron Lake, Okabena, Kinbrae and Dundee were off longer. 

ITC and Federated crews worked to thoroughly inspect the equipment to ensure no other damage existed before ITC closed their breaker to restore power to these four towns and surrounding areas.