About 22,000 homes and businesses lost power on Wednesday after a Nikiski generation plant operated by Homer Electric Association went offline.
The outage happened at approximately 11 a.m. and covered several areas of the Kenai Peninsula including Kenai, Soldotna, Nikiski and Homer.
“That generation plant, for reasons unknown at this time, tripped offline,” said HEA Spokesman Joe Gallagher. “We lost that plant when that happened. The majority of the system saw the outage.”
To rectify the outage, HEA started up the Bernice Lake plant in Nikiski and increased the load of a plant already online in Soldotna. By approximately 11:25 a.m., Gallagher said power had been restored to the entire service area.
“We have to put power back on … circuit by circuit,” he said.
— Megan Pacer
