Union City, Tenn.—The Union City Electric System lost power to the majority of its customers yesterday when a Tennessee Valley Authority 161,000 volt circuit breaker in the Reelfoot Avenue substation failed and caused power to go out in the area.
In a press release, UCES Manager Jerry Bailey said, “After isolating the circuit breaker power was restored to most of Union City Electric System’s customers in about an hour. The southwest part of the Union City Electric’s service area was able to keep power since it was not currently being fed from that substation.”
TVA will be running tests on the circuit breaker over the next few days to determine the cause of the failure.
Due to the extended time for the outage, Union City Electric System’s internet customers and Jackson Energy Authority’s Union City phone customers lost service. Plans are being developed to make the system more resilient to extended outages.
Union City Electric System regrets the outage and inconvenience caused to its customers, Bailey said.