LEESBURG — “We’re up and running,” City Manager Al Minner said Wednesday morning following Tuesday night’s power outage to thousands of Leesburg Electric customers.
Lightning struck a Duke Power transmission line at the substation by the Cutrale orange juice plant on U.S. Highway 441 around 7:30 p.m.
“It knocked power out to three of our five substations,” Al Minner said.
Those substations service the areas of Lake Square Mall, Center Street and the Cutrale juice plant, Minner said. The power came back on around 8:15 p.m. near the Lake Square Mall, but other areas had to wait until around 10:30 p.m.
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It knocked out power to about 10,000 to 15,000 of Leesburg Electric’s 27,000 customers, Minner said.
The affected areas were all points east and south from the intersection of Citizens Boulevard and U.S. 441, along with localized distribution areas, according to a city press release.
The electrical system has built-in redundancy, the ability to switch power to different substations. However, the lightning bolt struck just in front of the switches at the Cutrale site, frying the switching gear. So the redundancy at that site is out and probably will be for a few months, Minner said.
The Cutrale site is unique. One line was for the juice plant itself; two others fed other city customers, including downtown. The Cutrale line was restored by 2 a.m.
At about 8 a.m. Wednesday, City Commissioner Dan Robuck was warning downtown business owners and customers on Facebook to “try to get things done this morning as it’s possible you will lose power again today.”
Minner said at that time the warning was valid. But by 10 a.m. progress had been made, so barring any other unusual occurrence, there should not be any undue concern.