About one-third of the City of Atlantic and a large part of a rural area served by an Atlantic Municipal Utilities substation were without power for a few minutes Tuesday evening, thanks to a previously unknown problem.

Greg Smith, AMU’s Director of Electric Operations said they were putting in a new control system at around 4:45-p.m., and when they went to test the system and operate a breaker remotely, they quickly discovered a problem with some of the older wiring. Smith says result was a signal being sent to a wrong breaker, which opened-up and caused the Chestnut Street substation to briefly go off-line. He says it‘s a good thing they found the problem because the wiring was incorrect.

He says once the signal was sent and the breakers were tripped, they were able to clear the alarms and restore electrical service.  Smith says they are working to correct the problem so it doesn’t occur again.