More than 11,000 Sussex County residents were left without power last week after a fire broke out at a substation in Rehoboth and equipment failed at another.
Last Wednesday, a fire at a substation about 5:35 p.m. left 5,700 Delmarva Power residential and commercial customers in south Rehoboth and Dewey Beach without power until roughly 2:40 a.m. early Thursday morning. All of Dewey Beach was left unlit on the steamy night last week.
Then, on Friday, faulty equipment caused a failure at Delmarva’s Frankford substation, leaving another 5,700 customers without power in the local towns of Selbyville, Frankford, Dagsboro, Clarksville and Millsboro.
Delmarva Power officials said a piece of faulty equipment at the Frankford substation caused the outage. What caused the equipment to falter is not yet known.
Roughly 3,000 customers first lost power in Frankford, Dagsboro, Clarksville and Millsboro about 2:45 p.m. As Delmarva Power officials attempted to handle the situation, about 2,700 customers in Selbyville lost power. By shifting the load onto other substations overnight, power was restored locally on by 10 p.m. on Friday, according to Mary Street, Delmarva Power spokesperson.
Working overnight, Delmarva Power officials shifted the power back to a temporary mobile unit at the Frankford substation by early Saturday morning.
“The guys had been moving them all night,” Street said. “Once Saturday morning hit, you would have had to be shifting loads again to try and make sure you have balanced loads or it would have caused more problems.”