Big Lake (7/23/24)
At 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, July 23, 2024, Big Lake Substation Circuit 3 recloser locked out, leaving 294 members in Big Lake and Big Lake Township without power. Soon thereafter various SCADA alarms rang indicating a problem inside the Big Lake Substation. At 6:35 a.m., System Operations opened all Big Lake Substation circuit reclosers via SCADA, leaving an additional 2,028 members in Big Lake, Big Lake Township, Orrock Township and Livonia Township without power. At 6:45 a.m., Great River Energy reported there was an ongoing fire inside the substation.  Our crews arrived onsite and began isolating the substation to allow the fire department to extinguish the flames. The initial determination is that the Circuit 3 recloser failed and caught fire. By 7:48 a.m., our crews had all circuits back fed from neighboring substations and power was restored to all affected members.

System Wide Storm Outages (7/22/24)
Just before 5 p.m. on Monday, July 22, 2024, a thunderstorm rolled across our service territory causing 1,482 members to lose power across fourteen different incidents. Our distribution system sustained two circuit outages, nine line outages, and three smaller outages. The majority of the incidents were caused by vegetation while a few were attributed to lightning or couldn't be determined. There were five Connexus crews working to restore power. The average member lost power for just over 96 minutes. All affected members were restored before midnight.

East Bethel (7/19/24)
At 1:42 p.m. Friday, July 19, 2024, Coopers Corner Substation Circuit 4 recloser locked out, leaving 533 members in East Bethel without power. A tree fell from outside of the right-of-way and hit our overhead line near Highway 65 & 221^st Ave NE. At 2:11 p.m., the fire department extinguished flames under our line and power was restored via SCADA to 281 affected members. The fire department then reported lines down and another fire east of Highway 65 along 221^st Ave NE. Our crews opened and grounded our downed overhead line to allow the fire department to extinguish the flames. At 3:10 p.m., our crews finished making repairs and power was restored to the remaining 252 affected members.

System Wide Storm Outages (7/14/24)
Just before midnight on Sunday, July 14, 2024, a severe thunderstorm with strong winds rolled across our service territory. This caused a significant number of outages and damages to our distribution system. We responded to two circuit outages, over 50 line outages, over 75 smaller outages, and dozens of non-outage incidents. In addition to all available Connexus crews, we called in five guest crews from East Central Energy, Elk River Municipal, and Brink Constructors along with two tree crews from Asplundh to help with our restoration efforts. Over 5,700 members were affected by outages throughout the event. On average, a member was out of power for just over 4.5 hours. The longest outage lasted just over 21 hours. In addition to the crews, we called in help from the warehouse, fleet, system operations, bird dogs for our guest crews, member services, IT, and numerous other office support staff to manage the event. The last member affected by this event was restored just before 1:00 a.m. on Monday, making the total duration of this event just over 25 hours long.