The Utility Service Board unanimously approved a request by USB Vice Chairman Kent Brewer on Monday night to give Duke Energy 45 days to personally deliver a written report about the power outage that hit Frankfort during the summer.
The USB says failure to do this means it will file a complaint about the incident with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC).
“This goes back to the outage of July 26,” said USB Chairman Mike Kelley. “We were out (of power) because of what we felt were faulty ideas and concepts used in construction from Duke Energy. We asked IMPA (Indiana Municipal Power Agency) for some input. We got a report from them and actually some of the things in that report bother us quite a bit about the priorities they showed in the reporting to us.”
It was determined that a failed lightning arrester was the blame for the outage which lastly nearly three hours and affected more than 9,000 Frankfort Municipal Utilities customers.
However, USB officials say the report filed with IMPA says Duke had two of the three transmission lines feeding Frankfort substations out of service for maintenance or reconstruction leaving Frankfort with just one source of power.
“We are going to file a complaint probably about why we were without power and why there wasn’t a better contingency plan for supplying our power on that date,” said Kelley. “If we don’t get what we feel is a satisfactory response, there will be a complaint made to the IURC. That is what we understand the IURC is suppose to be regulating and watching out for those people who are getting power from these big people who think that the small people don’t really count.”