'Unplanned outage' affects around 2,300 Entergy Arkansas customers

Hotter-than-expected weather coupled with higher-than-expected demand led to an outage Friday evening as Entergy Arkansas Inc. crews were performing "scheduled reliability repairs" at the Hot Springs West Substation, an Entergy spokesman said Saturday.

The resulting outage affected around 2,300 customers in west Hot Springs and the Thornton Ferry Road area for around 45 minutes, said Jim Garland, Entergy's regional customer service manager.

"In order to perform the work without taking a planned outage, we were back feeding the customers on the circuit being worked on from a different source on another circuit," Garland said.

"Because of higher-than-expected temperatures and higher-than-expected electric load conditions caused by high air conditioner usage, the backup circuit experienced a line fuse failure," he said.

When the line fuse failed, it also caused a breaker to operate up the line from the blown fuse, leading to the outage.

"Entergy Arkansas regrets this unplanned outage at such an inconvenient time on Friday afternoon and appreciate our customer's patience during the repair effort," he said.

Local on 10/07/2018

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