Equipment failure blamed for Wednesday’s power outage

National Grid now knows what caused Wednesday’s power outage in parts of St. Lawrence and Jefferson counties.

Officials say there was an equipment failure on a transmission line.

“Issues on transmission lines have a greater impact than distribution lines that run alongside roadways. These are high-capacity systems that bring service to points of connection that provide electricity to localities, which is why there was such a large geographic impact,” said Jared Paventi, spokesperson.

Shortly after 2 p.m. Wednesday more than 9,600 National Grid customers lost power. Electricity was restored several hours later.

Paventi said crews are working to diagnose the exact cause of the transmission line failure and determine what work may be necessary to prevent similar issues in the future.