By Martha Jacob
On Saturday, September 8, the lights will go out in Ripley for approximately 8 hours to allow Duke Energy to make much needed upgrades to the sub-station on Circle Drive in the village. The substation is located behind the cemetery.
Ripley Village Administrator Pete Renshaw says he is doing everything he can do to inform residents of the village about the scheduled blackout.
“This sub-station is actually owned by Duke energy, but the villages buys its power from American Electric Power,” Renshaw said. “It’s a complicated relationship between the providers. The transmission lines that travel throughout the village are owned by Duke Energy. We get a good rate when we buy the energy at a wholesale price.”
Renshaw said that Duke inspected the substation last summer and noted that a number of improvements were in dire need of being done at the substation.
“Duke told us about all these things that needed to be done,” Renshaw said, “Then they never came back and never mentioned it again. So, now that they’ve come back this summer, they plan on putting in a new pole, some new reclosers which is some kind of component coming off the transformers. Last summer they checked it all out and found that one of the reclosers was at 40 degrees and another one was at 200 degrees, so they’ve decided to completely be replaced.”
Renshaw continued, “They’ve said it could take at least six hours, but they have allowed for eight to be on the safe side. I’ve been working hard to get the word out so that people can be prepared. I understand certain medications need to be kept refrigerated, like insulin, so people should have time to prepare for the outage. I’ve run an ad in the Ripley Bee, I’ll send out a one call, put it on facebook and our village website. I’ll also send out notification, by letter to our businesses.”