Power cut to over 30K in NorCo during Met-Ed substation malfunction, utility says

More than 30,000 Northampton County customers were in the dark over the weekend due to a malfunction at a Palmer Township power substation, a Met-Ed spokesman said.

Met-Ed spokesman Todd Meyertold lehighvalleylive.com the widespread outages began around 4 p.m. Saturday. They affected Met-Ed customers, including: 1,400 in Bath; 4,200 in Easton; 1,000 in East Allen Township; 5,200 in Forks Township; 2,400 in Lehigh Township; 950 in Lower Nazareth Township; 1,600 in Moore Township; 9,200 in Palmer Township; 1,000 in Upper Nazareth Township; 1,000 in Nazareth; and 2,700 in Wilson Borough.

In many instances, system operators can switch customers to other lines using remote control switches to shift power flows, he said. In other spots, line workers needed to drive to different locations to manually operate switches.

Met-Ed officials continue to investigate what caused the malfunction at its Northwood Substation, near Northwood Avenue in Palmer Township.

The large substation supplies numerous smaller substations with electricity. Each smaller substation energizes a network of power lines to feed electricity to communities across Northampton County, Meyers said.

The Northwood Substation was completely out of power on Saturday, which meant a disruption of electric supply to the other interconnected substations and the power lines they supply.

"We are still not certain what caused the main circuit breaker at Northwood to open up ... disrupting the power," Meyers said Monday morning. "We certainly appreciate the patience of our customers as we worked as quickly as possible to get their lights back on."

Meyers said electricians, technicians and engineers remained onsite Monday with special infrared camera equipment, which can detect loose connections, hot spots and other potential issues with equipment invisible to the naked eye. The equipment is assisting Met-Ed officials in their investigation.