More than 3,000 homes, businesses lose power in the State College area
More than 3,000 West Penn Power customers in the State College area lost power Sunday afternoon after a tree fell on a utility pole. The majority of outages — more than 2,500 at one point — were in State College borough, with others reported in College, Ferguson and Harris townships.
The tree fell at 12:34 p.m., which caused the utility pole’s two power lines lines to make contact with each other. That created an electrical condition that damaged a circuit breaker at a State College substation, West Penn spokesperson Todd Meyers said in email.
“Other power lines that radiate from the substation were impacted due to the damaged substation breaker, and lost power as well,” Meyers said of the outage, which affected 3,300 customers.
Meyers said two circuits were fixed at 3 p.m., which restored power to more than 1,800 customers. The remaining customers were restored Sunday evening, according to West Penn Power’s website.
The outages affected several businesses, including Schlow Centre Region Library in downtown State College and Meyer Dairy on South Atherton Street, which both posted on Facebook that they were closed due to lack of power.
Several traffic lights were also out in the area.
As of 4:45 p.m. Sunday, there were 1,381 outages in the borough of State College. Another 16 were in Harris Township, with fewer than five each in College and Ferguson townships. By 7:20 p.m., power was restored throughout the area.
This story was originally published November 20, 2022 at 2:20 PM.
