Power outage affects Randolph area

BELDEN – A widespread power outage left people across northeast Nebraska in the dark for several hours July 26-27.

Grant Otten, media relations specialist with the Nebraska Public Power District, said the outage occurred when a piece of equipment at NPPD’s Belden substation failed at about 9:05 p.m.

Local fire crews were called in as a result of a substation fire.

The outage affected four Cedar- Knox Public Power District substations, four Northeast Power substations and substations for the cities of Laurel and Randolph.

NPPD crews responded quickly to the Belden substation to work on repairs and bring affected substations back online.

Cedar-Knox, a wholesale customer of NPPD, and Northeast Power also both had crews respond to the outage.

Service was restored to the affected substations throughout the evening of July 26 into the early morning hours of July 27.

The city of Randolph, a wholesale municipal customer of NPPD, was affected by the outage as well.

Customers in the western part of Wayne-based Northeast Power’s service area also were impacted, including in the Concord, Dixon, McLean, Osmond and Randolph areas.