UPDATE | FirstEnergy line to blame for citywide power outage in Hubbard

More than 2,000 Hubbard city and township residents were in the dark — again — during a brief Thursday afternoon power outage caused by the FirstEnergy transmission line that feeds the municipality-owned grid.

The outage happened about 11:45 a.m. and lasted about an hour, said Lauren Siburkis, FirstEnergy Corp. representative.

“We let [residents] know from the start that we would expect to have them back up and running by 2:30 p.m. In most cases, we always give a worst case scenario,” she said. “In this case, we had customers back up and running at 12:50 p.m.”

Siburkis said a high voltage power line tripped, causing the citywide outage — similar to how a circuit breaker can trip in a home.

“When there’s an electrical issue within your home, it’ll shut the breaker off to isolate the damage and keep everyone safe,” she said.

It’s not the first time the transmission line was responsible for a citywide outage. A similar outage happened in August, caused by heat-related electrical issues, leaving Hubbard residents’ air conditioners inoperable at the peak of summer heat, WKBN reported that month.

“... And that’s something for discussion with FirstEnergy. To be able to find a solution because you know multiple power outages strictly based on the transmission issue, to me, it’s problematic and it’s not fair for our residents,” Hubbard Mayor Benjamin Kyle told WKBN in August.

FirstEnergy crews did a thermal inspection on the line following the summer outage, identified the cause and made repairs, Siburkis said.

“There was a lot of demand for electricity, when the heat was very high and people were cranking their air conditioning, it caused the line to overheat,” she said.

But Thursday’s outage was something different, Siburkis said.

“There were equipment issues that were invisible to the naked eye on the power line that served power into Hubbard Municipal [Light & Power System],” she said.

A major outage hasn’t happened since August, but they could be caused by “a number of things,” Siburkis said.

“All it takes is like a tree branch or something to blow into our line and lock the system out until we come out and remove the line or move the branch from the line,” she said.

Phone lines for Hubbard’s electric system were inoperable following the outage. A city police dispatcher told Mahoning Matters earlier Thursday the outage was caused by an issue at the city’s transformer substation, which the city owns and operates.

Edward Palestro, service superintendent for Hubbard’s Electric Department, later told Mahoning Matters that report was “erroneous” and Siburkis confirmed the FirstEnergy-owned transmission line was at fault.

“Transmission lines deliver high voltage power to customers, and that power is then brought into a [transformer] substation, which brings the voltage down to a level where you can safely distribute it into homes,” Siburkis said.

When electricity leaves the transformer substations, it’s distributed via city-owned and operated power lines to Hubbard neighborhoods.

FirstEnergy customers can get the latest information on power outages in their area on FirstEnergy’s outages website.

This story was originally published December 30, 2021 at 1:19 PM.