Power Restored After Copper Theft
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Copper Theft
Copper theft at a local power substation left thousands without power Monday morning.
NBC 4
Copper theft at a local power substation left thousands without power Monday morning.
Published: November 16, 2009
Updated: November 16, 2009
GROVE CITY, Ohio—For nearly two hours Monday, copper theft at a Grove City power substation left thousands without power.
As of 9 a.m., 10,785 residential and business AEP customers were without power. Traffic signals were also affected by the outage. Power was restored by 11 a.m.
AEP officials said the theft occurred over the weekend or Sunday night and was discovered Monday morning. It was immediately reported to the sheriff’s office.
AEP workers closed the substation to allow them to repair the damage.
“We had to interrupt power to nearly 12,000 customers in the Grove City area to protect our employees and the public while our crews repaired damage caused by these thefts,“ says Natalie McCord, AEP Ohio Columbus District manager distribution system.
“This theft created an extremely hazardous situation that potentially could have resulted in serious injury or death to our employees or anyone near the station. As soon as the theft was discovered, it was reported to local law enforcement and we acted immediately to de-energize the station to eliminate the risk of dangerous, high voltage shock. Thieves can be and have been seriously injured or killed when removing copper from energized electrical equipment.“
According to AEP, these incidents also are very costly to the company and potentially could affect customers’ future electric rates. It costs AEP Ohio roughly $25,000 per incident on average to repair. Since mid-June, Approximately 40 AEP Ohio substations have been hit by copper thieves. Approximately 12 of these break-ins required outages to make repairs, affecting more than 66,000 AEP Ohio customers.
Copper prices are rising again and this year American Electric Power substations have been hit hard.
At a substation on Westerville Road nearly $11,000 worth of copper wire was stolen in early August.
That substation was hit a few times this year.
In June the fence at an AEP yard on Hall Road was cut and $5,000 worth of wire was stolen.
In May an AEP substation on Shannon Road was broken into and 30 feet of copper ground wire was stolen from what are called wave traps. 1,400 feet of copper was also taken from a spool.
In that case the police report said the thieves put themselves at great risk of electrocution.
About a year ago, AEP started replacing copper wire with copper-clad wire, which works the same but is worthless at a scrap yard.
Monday afternoon AEP couldn’t say if what was stolen from the substation near Grove City was copper or it’s much less expensive substitute.
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Reader Reactions
If you rely on electricity to live (i.e. are on life support), then you had BETTER have an alternative source of power…generators are not that expensive, and quite safe to operate if done properly. It’s not AEP’s responsibility to make sure you have an alternate source of power if it goes out, that’s YOUR responsibility…
What"IF” Someone at home that is terminally ill and on life support devices( Heart/lung,Dialysis Machine,etc) has their power interrupted with no backup means of power and NO notification from AEP?
Ok if this is becoming such an exspensive problem why not equip all stations with cameras and/or armed security guards? In the long run that would be cheaper then constantly replacing what they steal.
What are the stats on how many of these bozos become crispy critters in a given year? Darwin Awards, anyone?
...maybe time to set up in a brick and mortar building. Chain link and do not tresspass signs are not working.
cakemaster, Mike Jackson’s initial report at the top of the noon hour stated it happened last week just for clarification on the folks saying it was a week ago. As more details come in and are released though its no wonder that things change.
To those who said it happened a week ago: “AEP officials said the theft occurred over the weekend or Sunday night and was discovered Monday morning.“ Last I checked, it’s only Monday.
And if we had received notice beforehand, it wouldn’t have been much earlier than 8:00 this morning, so it wouldn’t have done much for appointments that were already scheduled.
I work for a family eyecare practice in Grove City and I think a little bit of notice might have been appropriate since we lost 5 exams this morning.Personally, I feel this was totally unprofessional of AEP. Had we known that this would be a scheduled event we would have never scheduled any patients.
I dont think there was any weird conspiracy here. But the phone call was really nice letting us know it was being turned off however it would have been nicer to have the phone call before they shut it off. I was in the middle of cooking breakfast for my son whose school doesnt start til 9 am and when I got to his school I was told they did not have power either (Park Street) and they were making due and only had to try to figure out what lunches to substitute in for a hot meal. It would have beeen better that we had even a half hour notice but its nice to know that they are trying to deter thieves.
AEP has to shut off the power to safely replace the stolen equipment. No sense taking dumb chances like the criminals did.
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