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Power outage frustrations in Susquehanna County

Power outages day in and day out for the last week have people frustrated with no reason why it's happening.

SUSQUEHANNA, Pa. — People who live in and around the borough of Susquehanna say their power has been going out every day, sometimes more than once a day, for a week or more.

Penelec customers in Susquehanna and neighboring communities say their power has been going off and on despite the nice weather for most of the week.

"That was the craziest thing! It was nice weather up until today, maybe, but I don't know why the power keeps going out. I don't know," Timothy Mangin said. "A lot of people rely on electricity for their heat. Sometimes they can't afford propane, and it's horrible. If the power does go out, they can't have heat, and what else are they going to do?"

"A week today, almost two or three times a day sometimes. It's annoying," Teresa Ballard said.

Some of the customers affected by the power outages also happen to be businesses, and they say they hate having to turn away customers when there's an outage.

"It's just sad. This is the time that we're trying to get people in here. I'm a new business, and the fact that my lights are off and I can't do anything about it," said Melissa Dubas, Erie & Main Coffee House.

And it's not just the inconvenience of having to reset the clock. People we spoke with worry about their appliances.

'As the power goes out, I run to that. It blinks on and off before it's going to shut off. Last night, we were here at 8 o'clock, and the whole town, blackout," Dubas said.

"The one day, half of it went out, and the other half didn't. If you don't have your TV on a surge protector, it's going to blow your TV. People can't afford to keep going out and buying that," Ballard said.

We reached out to Penelec about the recent outages, and they sent this statement:

Penelec determined that a failed lightning protection device in our Susquehanna substation caused a large outage that interrupted electrical service for about 1,100 in Susquehanna Borough and surrounding areas on November 9. We repaired the equipment Sunday and believe that will address many of the issues.

Additionally, a smaller subset of customers served by the local power line have experienced nine outages since June – half being 30 minutes or less. Two of the outages were caused by off-right-of-way trees that we don't have the legal ability to trim that fell into and damaged our wires during summer thunderstorms. A third outage was due to an issue with a neighboring utility whose system feeds electricity to a portion of our network.

Our engineers are reviewing these outages to determine what upgrades can be made to improve electrical service to our customers. The line is scheduled for a full inspection in 2022 and we trimmed trees along the right-of-way in 2020, which occurs every five years.

Todd Meyers
Penelec spokesperson

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