Power line 'fault' kills power to entire city
By BENJAMIN C. SHARP bensharp@journal-spectator.com

An unknown problem combined with a massive transmission line replacement project to knock out power to the entire city of Wharton Tuesday morning.

The outage lasted just 10 minutes, but was widespread, killing the lights at City Hall, throwing computers off line at the Journal-Spectator office and knocking out traffic signals in between.

CenterPoint Energy's Joe Bilski said a "fault" occurred in the vicinity of the Colorado Bend Energy Center around 8:45 a.m. Tuesday.

Normally, such a problem would result in a "blip" in customer's electricity service as the system automatically rerouted power.

That wasn't possible this time around, however. Center- Point is currently upgrading a power transmission line between Wharton and East Bernard and had shut off power in that section.

When the problem occurred on Tuesday, there was no power from the other side of town to draw from.

The entire line went down, staying off until 8:55 a.m.

"It didn't have the ability to roll over and feed from the other line," Bilski said.

"It was the whole city (that lost power)."

Bilski said it's unclear if such losses will occur in the future as the transmission line project continues, with a projected wrap-up date of the end of November.

That's because the cause of Tuesday's power "fault" is still unknown.

"We're trying to put our finger on the exact location of where that occurred," he said.