Power Outage in Priest Lake Area

The Bonneville Power Administration supplies power to the 3 Northern Lights substations in the Priest Lake area.  Northern Lights then distributes the power from the substations to our members’ homes and businesses.

This outage will impact nearly 3500 Northern Lights members served the Lamb Creek substation located in Priest Lake, the Coolin substation and the Blue Lake substation north of Priest River. This includes all Northern Lights members north of Priest River and those in Priest Lake and the surrounding areas including both sides of the lake, Coolin and Nordman.

Bonneville Power Administration will be working to replace transmission power poles and working on transmission lines near its Priest River substation.  They will also be working on equipment inside the substation. A power outage is needed to safely perform these infrastructure upgrades and maintenance.

Because the power will need to be out during this time, Northern Lights linemen will also be conducting needed maintenance, inspecting lines and equipment and addressing potential issues that could otherwise lead to future power outages.

All maintenance and upgrades contribute to the overall reliability and stability of the electrical grid and reduce the risk of future, unexpected outages.

Selecting dates for a 2-day outage is not an easy task. Northern Lights worked with the Bonneville Power Administration to select a date.  The outage needed to take place during daylight hours for the safety of the linemen.  The date selected was based on several factors including:

• The school year, which ended on June 11, minimizing the impact on student learning.
• The need to access roads and areas closed to vehicles exceeding seasonal weight limits during the springtime.
• The desire to minimize the impact on Northern Lights member businesses.
• The need to complete the infrastructure repairs in advance of the hotter, drier summer weather, when wildfire risk is greater.
• The availability of additional BPA crews to reduce the number of days needed to complete the work.
• The availability of additional Northern Lights crews to conduct needed maintenance simultaneously, reducing the need for additional outages and addressing potential issues that could otherwise lead to future power outages.

A daytime power outage is needed for lineworkers to safely perform the infrastructure upgrades and required maintenance. This is Bonneville Power Administration outage, working on replacing poles with high voltage transmission power lines and working inside the substation.

We make every effort to notify members about planned power outages.  For this significant outage, impacted members will be notified directly via postcard, e-mail and/or a text or voice message. How members are notified depends on the contact information provided to Northern Lights and member preferences set in SmartHub.

Make sure your contact information with the cooperative is up to date to ensure you receive timely notifications. To updat4e your information, contact the Northern Lights Member Services team at 208-263-5141 during regular business hours or update your information via SmartHub.

We make every effort to notify impacted members about planned power outages.  For this significant outage, impacted members were notified directly via postcard, e-mail and/or a text or voice message. How members are notified depends on the contact information provided to Northern Lights and member preferences set in SmartHub.

If your postcard was sent to an incorrect location, you didn’t receive an e-mail or you didn’t receive a text or voicemail message, you likely need to update your contact information with the cooperative. Contact the Northern Lights Member Services team at 208-263-5141 during regular business hours to update your information.