Faulty Circuit Breaker to Blame in Newport Outage

Over in Newport, a faulty circuit breaker is being blamed for causing a 42-minute power outage yesterday morning that affected more than 1,000 residents and three public schools.

According to a press release from Eversource – formerly known as Public Service of New Hampshire – a breaker located on Cheney Street failed shortly after 11 a.m., leaving customers north and northwest of Sunapee Street without electricity. Newport High School, Towle Elementary School and Richard Elementary were all affected by the outage, but able to continue operations.

The Newport Montessori School over on Pine Street, however, was not affected. Crews replaced the faulty breaker and had power restored by 11:42, minimizing delays to school lunches.

Eversource utilized social media to thank customers for their patience after the outage with posts on Facebook and Twitter. Eversource serves more than 3.6 million customers in the Granite State, and provides the majority of Sullivan County with its electricity.