Thousands lost power in Charlotte on Tuesday, and there wasn’t a single storm
About 8,000 Duke Energy customers in northeast Charlotte suddenly lost power on Tuesday morning, according to the company’s outage map.
The outages appeared to be concentrated in an area where main power lines lead from an electrical substation, company spokesman Jeff Brooks told The Charlotte Observer.
Crews determined that an equipment failure caused the outage, he said.
By 12:30 p.m., power had been restored to all but about 2,165 customers, according to the map. Most of the customers still without power were in the NoDa-Sugar Creek area, the map showed.
Another 372 customer were without power in the Piper Glen area of south Charlotte. The cause of that outage wasn’t immediately known.
By late afternoon, nearly all customer had power.
Such a large number of outages is more typically seen when severe storms roll through the area.
Tuesday morning was a typically hot and sunny July day, but with no storms, according to the National Weather Service.
Brooks said Duke Energy has installed a technology covering about 20% or 25% of customers statewide, including in Charlotte, that in seconds reroutes affected customers to another power line. The company intends to have 80% of its customers covered by the new technology in a few years, he said.
He compared what the technology does to how GPS alerts drivers to an alternate route when a wreck is ahead.
This story was originally published July 13, 2021 at 12:23 PM.