Almost 800 La Plata Electric Association customers, including some large businesses, were without power for more than five hours Monday south of downtown Durango.
The outage occurred about 2 p.m. and lasted until 7:22 p.m., affecting utility users from Bodo Drive to just south of the Animas Air Park. The cause was failed equipment in a junction box.
“Usually what we do when we have an outage is isolate the fault, which is basically, where is the problem?” said Hillary Knox, LPEA spokeswoman.
LPEA was able to return power to one circuit for a portion of the afternoon. Shortly after 5 p.m., the outage appeared to impact 794 customers, according to the LPEA outage map.
Businesses in Bodo Industrial Park, Walmart, Home Depot and the Animas Air Park were affected by the outage.
LPEA crews focused on identifying the circuit fault Monday. A circuit faults when it senses something is wrong. It is tied to LPEA’s fail-safe system, which stops the flow of electricity through a line for safety reasons when an issue occurs.
“When something faults, it means lines are running correctly,” Knox said.
LPEA members can sign up for an outage notification service to receive alerts if the address on the account is within an outage range. Registration is available at https://lpea.coop/ots.
smullane@durangoherald.com
