AUSTIN, Texas — Austin Energy has unmasked the culprit of a power outage that affected customers in West Austin early Monday morning – a rat.
At 5:46 a.m. on Oct. 31, an outage was reported in the West Austin area near the Commons Ford Substation. It affected 7,147 customers.
While crews with Austin Energy were on the scene, it was discovered that an animal "had gotten into the distribution breaker in the substation and made ground," according Matt Mitchell, Austin Energy's public spokesperson.
The rat had chewed one of the wires, which caused the energy that would originally have flowed through the direct electrical connection to the earth, also called "ground," to instead flow through the rat.
Grounding circuits, whether they are for distribution breakers or a normal circuit, allow any occupant in a building to be safe from the high voltage that is traveling through the circuit.
After crews had discovered the rat and the damage created by it, the necessary repairs were made and all customers' power was restored an hour later at 6:41 a.m. Monday.
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