Power Restored

From an article in The Midland Daily News:

Consumers said it finished restoring power Monday to more than 252,000 customers who lost electricity last week due to severe weather. The company said more than 340 crews worked to restore power, including 84 from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin. Some 5,800 customers, including 700 in the Midland area, were still without power as of Monday morning. Here's basically how the power system works. Electricity comes from the generating plant over high-voltage lines to a substation, where voltage is reduced but still remains high. The power is distributed over a series of circuits, then goes through a transformer where voltage is reduced to household levels. Crews had to deal with a variety of problems: a small number of broken poles, broken cross arms atop the poles, high-voltage lines and distribution circuits that failed, and wires that came down with ice-laden trees. For each broken wire, someone had to climb the pole, splice the broken pieces together and get them high enough in the air so they wouldn't tangle with trees. One crew member working in mid-Michigan fell and suffered a broken leg, Ebelt said.