Power Restored to 9,800 Ohio Edison Customers

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — After about 90 minutes, power had been restored to nearly 9,800 customers affected by a sudden outage Thursday afternoon.

Around 2:36 p.m., a 138-kilovolt transmission line went out of service, said Chris Eck, a spokesman with Ohio Edison, knocking out seven substations that serve nearly 9,800 customers. The outage was focused on an area east of downtown Youngstown, with outages in Campbell and McGuffey Heights, Eck said.

By 3:50 p.m., all outages had been remedied and power was restored to all customers, Eck said. The company had switched power around to smaller lines to isolate the problem and is still working to determine the cause for the transmission line going out, he said. The company originally expected the remaining substations back in service by 6 p.m.

The outage affected operations at several downtown businesses. It came between the lunch and dinner crowds at V2 Trattoria & Wine Bar, but there were still people in the restaurant, general manager Kevin Deckant reported.

“Our computers were down. We can’t serve anything,” he said. He could not say how much business the outage might have cost the restaurant. 

Jerome Franklin, owner of Starting Lineup Barbershop and Beauty Salon and SLU Luxury Salon in the Realty Tower, said he had to cancel appointments with or turn away 10 customers because of the outage. “It was a big inconvenience,” he said.

The DoubleTree by Hilton Youngstown Downtown was more marginally affected by the outage, assistant general manager Alex Cardenas reported. 

“We have a backup generator here so we’re able to operate pretty much as normal,” he said. 

The backup generator keeps the computers running for check-ins, maintains elevator service, keeps main area lighting on, permits the keycards to work on rooms and allows elevators to work. “All the electronic features that are necessary for us to operate are still going to be operable,” he said. 

Not powered by the backup generator are lighting for the back office operations and individual rooms. 

Also affected was the air conditioning system. “It’s working double-time now,” he said. 

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.