Purdy, Butterfield areas going dark overnight Saturday
BY KYLE TROUTMAN ktroutman@cassville-democrat.com
Liberty Utilities customers in the Purdy and Butterfield areas will be without power overnight on Saturday.
According to Meagan Spangler, Specialist III, Regional Communications with Liberty, a planned outage has been scheduled, set to begin at 10 p.m. Saturday and lasting up to 7 hours. Spangler said the outage is expected to impact approximately 1,000 customers, which is about 59% of Liberty’s Barry County meters.
“This is a planned outage for necessary maintenance on transmission infrastructure,” she said. “Our goal is to perform work in ways that avoid outages, however, as the safety of our team is a top priority, there are times when the scale or nature of the work requires disconnection from the grid.
“These types of outages are generally not frequent, happening a few times a year, and are primarily conducted to improve infrastructure that will help with our system’s reliability. Our operations teams also work to schedule the planned outages during times that will be least disruptive for most of our impacted customers.”
Specifically, Spangler said the infrastructure improvements are geared toward the winter season and avoiding outages while improving reliability.
She said for Saturday’s outage, Liberty plans to work as efficiently and safely as possible to reduce the outage length.
“We only perform planned outages when it is necessary,” Spangler said. “We work to communicate with our communities and community leaders so our customers are informed and can prepare as needed.”
Liberty customers can find information regarding Saturday’s outage on its website at: www.libertyenergyandwater. com.
Spangler said customers can also contact Liberty for emergencies anytime by calling 1-800206-2300.
“We also have representatives available at this number for questions from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday,” she said.
According to poweroutage. us, Barry County has six service providers with a total of 17,430 customers tracked. They include: Barry Electric Cooperative, 6,831; Carroll Electric Cooperative,6,035;Ozark Electric Cooperative, 2,847; Liberty Utilities, 1,706; New-Mac Electric Cooperative, 10; and Webster Electric Cooperative, 1.
