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Short outage leaves areas throughout Juneau without power

Published 9:30 pm Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Alaska Electric Light and Power Company Lemon Creek operations center in Juneau. (Michael Penn | Juneau Empire File)

Alaska Electric Light and Power Company Lemon Creek operations center in Juneau. (Michael Penn | Juneau Empire File)

A power outage briefly left areas around Juneau without power Thursday morning.

Shortly after 10:30 a.m., Alaska Electric Light and Power notified customers of the outage on Twitter. About 20 minutes later, AEL&P announced power was back on.

Portions of just about all of Juneau were affected by the outage, Driscoll said.

Debbie Driscoll, vice president and director of consumer affairs for AEL&P, said in an interview the cause of the outage was a tripped generating unit, which caused the system to self-regulate and shed load to stay balanced. What caused the snag with the generating unit was undetermined shortly after 11 a.m.

“They’re working right now to determine what the issue was,” Driscoll said.

She said during periods of high wind, it’s relatively for something, such as a tree coming down, to happen that causes a power outage.

In light of subfreezing temperatures, Driscoll encouraged Juneau residents to be prepared for such a situation by keeping their phones charged, having blankets on hand and taking other precautions.

Driscoll said if their is an outage, AEL&P tries to quickly share the information on social media and remedy the situation.

“Our crews are ready 24/7 to respond,” she said.