Projo 7 to 7 News Blog

National Grid said spent Thursday cutting off power to 5,000 customers so it could replace copper ground wire stolen from its Smithfield substation, just off Route 44.

The emergency repairs affected North Providence, Johnston, Smithfield and Scituate.

Spokesman David Graves said it appears that the theft was ongoing. Workers who arrived at the substation Thursday found much of the wire yanked out and some of it all rolled up, waiting to be taken away.

"The danger anyone places themselves in doing something like this is absolutely ridiculous. It's beyond foolishness. It's almost suicidal" because the wires in the substation is carrying tens of thousands of volts, said Graves. The ground wire might not be live, but manipulating it could cause a deadly electric arc.

The company originally planned to shut off all 5,000 customers served by the substation but, instead, decided to do rolling blackouts -- affecting 1,000 to 1,5000 customers at a time -- as portions of the substation were repaired.

Just after 4 p.m. four of the six sections had been fixed. Graves estimated that the power outages should be over before 6 p.m.

The theft was discovered after the company received a call of flickering lights in the North Providence area.

"We went out this morning and replaced a regulator," Graves said. That caused about 2,700 customers to lose power for an hour or so.

"Then we did a further inspection at the substation and found that some ground wire had been removed, and other wire had been rolled up, like it was being prepared for theft," said Graves. "Once pulled out of the ground, it creates an imbalance in the system, which caused the flicker."

He said he did not immediately know how much wiring had been removed.

Smithfield and State Police have been called in to investigate. National Grid also has a group of police departments and security organizations that specialize in investigating the theft of equipment from utility companies, Graves said.

(An earlier version of this story was posted at 2:25 p.m.)

 Tags  electricity National Grid

Comments

thinkingman said:

Shocking!

Link | November 19, 2009 9:29 PM
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Liberal Democrat said:

We need a law in RI that scrap dealers have to get and record photo ids and fingerprints of people selling metal.

The number of houses alone that are wrecked by these criminals is very large and very bad for neighborhoods.

Link | November 19, 2009 10:50 PM
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thinkingman said:

Shocking!

Link | November 19, 2009 11:30 PM
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