WPCNR CITY CIRCUITS. By John F. Bailey. July 13, 2004: A Con Edison spokesperson attributes the two recent blackouts in White Plains, one occurring approximately two weeks ago in the Soundview area, the other leaving Battle Hill in the dark last Thursday and pulling the plug on Fortunoff last Thursday evening. Chris Olert of the Con Ed Media Relations Department dismissed these blackouts as isolated incidents due to natural wear and tear. 

Mr. Olert explained: "Feeder Cables just feed the service that goes in your house or business," Chris told WPCNR "After his happens after we have a failure with a cable we take it to our cable center in The Bronx, and we analyze what caused the failures. On those two latest (incidents), I cannot tell you what caused the failures."

Asked if this could be related to electricity overload, Olert said, "No, probably not. It's not a supply problem."

"We're at the peak of summer use, with air conditioners cooking, and fans and everything that White Plains residents use around the region to keep cool. There's no supply problem," Olert elaborated. "Think of feeders as part of a fleet. On any given day for example, a police department, for example, will have one or two pieces of their equipment that are not on the road. We have 30,000 customers in White Plains. These are isolated problems. We (Con Edison) have 90,000 miles of cable underground, 30,000 overhead. In the county of Westchester, 6,200 miles of underground cable and 15,038 miles of overhead cables in the whole county. These (White Plains blackouts) are isolated, unrelated incidents."

Asked if Con Ed feels the feeder cables are being overloaded in White Plains, Olert said, "No."

"It could be faults in the cables, I can't tell you what caused the outages." Olert said.  He confirmed that one of the feeder cable failures knocked out the Fortunoff complex, which had to switch to on-premises generators. He said that was corrected Friday (within 24 hours).

Asked if, at this point, the White Plains outages were due to natural wear and tear, Olert said, "Probably. For example where there's overhead on the utility poles, they are sometimes vulnerable to errant drivers. Underground cables are more reliable.As I said, with any fleet of vehicles, you'll have some part of your fleet (cables) that's out."

WPCNR asked Olert if new cable was laid for the Fortunoff complex. He said he would have to check that.

WPCNR asked innocently if the cables were old that fed Fortunoff whether they would be more prone to fail. Olert said, "Age is not a factor. I'll tell you why. How old is your house (1946), does it keep you warm, dry?"

WPCNR asked if the new development in White Plains could be stressing the cable infrastructure in the city, and Olert said, "As I said, these blackouts are just isolated. It's a complex system. From time to time pieces of the system do break."

Olert said he would get back to WPCNR after analysis of the failed cables was complete.