TRANSMISSION RELATED OUTAGE AFFECTS BLP SYSTEM

GRAND HAVEN, MICH., Sept. 9, 2024 – The Grand Haven Board of Light and Power experienced a system-wide outage on Monday, September 9, 2024, due to a failure in one of the substations.

“It’s been a really long time since we’ve experienced an outage of this magnitude,” explained Rob Shelley, general manager. “The cause was a failure in a protective relay at one of our substations.”

The Board of Light and Power’s electrical system interconnects with the regional grid in two locations, one from the North and another from the South. The outage occurred in the northern interconnection while there was a planned maintenance outage simultaneously being performed on the other transmission feed from the south, causing the entire BLP system to lose power.

“I would like to thank the BLP employees for remaining calm and quickly responding,” stated Shelley. “This allowed us to identify the process necessary to rapidly restore power to our customers and the community. We also want to thank Public Safety for quickly responding at traffic intersections to ensure the public remains safe.”

The BLP’s internal engineering team will be working with expert consultants to perform a root cause analysis to ensure proper corrective measures are identified and implemented.

The BLP serves over 15,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers in the City of Grand Haven, City of Ferrysburg, Grand Haven, Spring Lake, and Robinson Townships.