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The work isn’t finished. In fact, in order to complete it, at some point over the next month the power will go out again for some Buckingham County residents. That was the message given Saturday afternoon by officials of the Central Virginia Electric Cooperative (CVEC). The company responded on its social media channels after a power outage that took nearly 24 hours to fix. 

A total of 1,510 homes in Buckingham County were affected by the outage, which came in the wake of a severe thunderstorm Friday night. But while the majority of homes in neighboring Appomattox, Cumberland and Prince Edward counties saw power restored by midnight on Saturday morning, Buckingham residents served by the Centenary substation were left in the dark until that afternoon. They posted on social media, reached out to The Herald, and some said they had called CVEC themselves, wanting to know what was wrong. At the time, all CVEC could say was that it was an issue having to do with their provider. 

CVEC buys some of the power they provide to Buckingham residents. And that power comes from American Electric Power (AEP), through their Appalachian Power subgroup. CVEC officials gave repeated updates during the outage to customers, explaining they couldn’t do anything because the issue wasn’t on their side. AEP got technicians out to the repair site at 8 a.m. Saturday and it took roughly six hours to turn the lights back on. The reason is that AEP had to get the transmission line that feeds the substation operating again. 

Power outage fix temporary 

After the outage was over, roughly 2:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon, the company officials posted on their social channels again, going into more detail about what caused the incident. 

“The issue that caused the outage was related to a failed piece of metering equipment in a hard to access area,” CVEC officials posted to their social media. They explained that was part of the reason repair work was delayed until Saturday morning. And the repair work isn’t finished yet, they said. 

“Temporary repairs were made (Saturday),” CVEC officials wrote. “There will likely be a short scheduled outage in the next month to make permanent repairs.” 

A date for that outage has not been scheduled yet. CVEC officials said when they do set a date and time, each of their customers will be notified weeks in advance so they can plan ahead. 

CVEC officials also apologized for the extended delay, saying they were working to make sure repairs wouldn’t take as long in the future. 

“The outage response time did not meet our expectations,” CVEC officials wrote. “CVEC has regular, ongoing discussions with our transmission providers, but will have additional specific discussions about this event to determine how restoration efforts can be expedited.”