Meredith, Moultonborough lose power Wednesday afternoon after line damage

MEREDITH — Damage to a transmission line interrupted electric service to areas of Meredith and Moultonborough for around six hours on Wednesday afternoon amid a significant heatwave.

One of two transmission lines that provide power to New Hampshire Electric Co-op customers in the two towns sustained damage and required repair around 1:15 p.m. on June 19, leaving 7,500 customers out of power.

Technicians worked to repair the damaged line and had it in functioning around 7 p.m. Wednesday. Electric service restoration began following the repairs, and there were no customers without power by Thursday afternoon.

“We experienced a loss of service due to damage to a transmission line in an off-road location,” Colin Manning, director of communications for New Hampshire Electric Co-op, said Thursday afternoon.

With only one of the transmission lines able to transfer electricity, power service was overloaded by high demand. Those transmission lines feed into an electrical substation in Moultonborough.

An extreme heatwave in the Lakes Region contributed to the loss of power because of increased consumer demand, Manning explained. But investments in infrastructure made by NHEC allow the co-op to reroute and redistribute power in instances when service is disrupted, which may have lessened the impact of this outage. 

“This is the time of year when you have extreme heat, you have high demand,” Manning said. “Given the extreme heat and the high demand, the provider’s transmission line couldn’t handle the load.”

Utilities company Eversource, which serves 42 customers in Meredith and three in Moultonborough, did not return requests for information regarding disruptions to their electric services.