Power goes out in Monett Friday

A power outage at an Empire District Electric substation north of Monett on Friday cut off power to Monett, Purdy and Butterfield for about 90 minutes at the end of the work day.

According to Monett utilitie supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) equipment, the outage occurred at 5:16 p.m. at Empire's substation about three miles north of the city limits on Highway H.

"Empire crews were able to quickly isolate the problem," said Amy Bass, director of corporate communications for Empire. "They transferred load to other circuits in order to restore service to customers while repairing the problem. All customers were returned to service by 6:45 p.m."

Monett utilities showed power was restored in the city by 6:57 p.m.

Pierce City, which has shared outages with Monett when the key substation on Highway H failed, maintained power because of the new substation placed by the North Park ballfield in Pierce City. Bass said customers experienced a blink in power as the system sensed a problem and switched to another source.