CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A large number of residents in West Virginia’s capital city woke up sweating Thursday morning and faced a long day with no air conditioning and temperatures forecast into the 90’s.
A transformer at Appalachian Power Company’s Greenbrier Station near the state capitol malfunctioned and shut off power to about 3,700 customers in the area.
“We’ve been moving as many customers as we can to other sources while we replace that transformer,” said Phil Moye, Spokesman for Appalachian Power. “We should have it back in by this afternoon, but in the meantime we’re still going to have about a thousand customers out of power while we get those repairs made.”
Moye says fortunately they had a replacement transformer nearby.
“There have been times when we’ve had to bring station transformers in from as far away as Roanoke or Columbus,” he said. “Fortunately we had one in Institute and we were able to get it on site pretty quickly.”
Moye says there was an internal problem with the transformer, but they won’t know for sure what caused the outage until it’s replaced. The company estimated full restoration by 3 p.m. on Thursday.