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Power cut traced to transformer Medford outage was not a �rolling blackout� A malfunctioning transformer has been blamed for a power outage that affected 22,500 customers throughout much of Medford Sunday night. It followed an outage Saturday night which left about 2,400 Shady Cove, Butte Falls and Eagle Point residents without electricity for most of Sunday. The most recent outage occurred at 11:56 p.m. Sunday and lasted about 34 minutes, said Pacific Power spokesman Monte Mendenhall. Sunday�s blackout was more widespread than the first, affecting electricity customers in most of west Medford, a significant part of east Medford and south Medford to Talent. Pacific Power workers traced the problem to a malfunctioning transformer at the company�s Lone Pine substation in the foothills east of Medford. It is one of three large transmission substations serving the Medford area. "Right now, we�re doing further investigation to see what this failure entailed, but at this point we�re not sure," Mendenhall said. Although both incidents occurred within approximately a 24-hour period, Mendenhall said problems at the Lone Pine substation were not related to earlier problems at a Takelma substation where a circuit breaker exploded at 10:30 p.m. Saturday. Workers replaced the Takelma equipment but have been unable to determine the cause of the equipment failure. "This doesn�t have anything to do with the situation in California," Mendenhall said. "This was a technical problem with equipment. There weren�t any (electricity) imbalances or intentional rolling blackouts." Just before Sunday�s late-night outage, some customers reportedly experienced a partial electrical failure � a brownout or voltage dip � which lasted about five minutes. Mendenhall said Pacific Power troubleshooting equipment had not recorded the partial failure. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.